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PROSTITUTION IN THE PHILIPPINES
Even though it is widely practiced, prostitution is illegal in the Philippines. There is an organized movement to make prostitution a legal activity in the Philippines. By one estimate a half a million women prostitute themselves.
There are basically three kinds of prostitutes in the Philippines: 1) those that work out of “casas,” or brothels, and are employed by pimps or brothel owners: 2) those who work in bars, karaokes and hotels, who are usually controlled by the owners of the establishment where they work; and 3) freelancers, who work the streets. Brothels are often disguised as restaurants.
Most of the men who use prostitutes in the Philippines are locals not foreigners. You would not get this impression by visiting one of the better known red light districts. Local tend to use community-, neighborhood- and town- based brotherl and sex workers. In Angeles City, near Clark Air base, there is one street with bars for foreigners on one side, and bars for locals on the other.
Many prostitutes work for pimps. One Filipinos social worker in Cebu told the Japan Times, “There are two type of pimps. The Amou, or maintainers, who recruit and take care of the girls, and make sure they do not run away. They also push drugs on the girls. The Iti, or wild ducks, chase customers, and bring them to the girls.”
Former prostitute Liza Gonzales told the Philippines Inquirer, “Women in this field are often looked at as sinners and home wreckers. “But we are not criminals … We are actually victims,” Gonzales said. “Some are victims of rape or incest. Some are girls from rural areas who were fooled by illegal recruiters … We are victims of different circumstances, but we all fell into prostitution,” she said. [Source: Rima Jessamine M. Granali, Philippine Daily Inquirer, September 26, 2011 /*]
The police arguably do more to abet prostitution than stop it. One sex worker told the Philippine Inquirer: “When cops like the apprehended woman, she is forced to have sex with them.” Nowadays, “kotong” (bribe) ranges from P3,000 to P4,500, and transactions begin even before they reach the precinct, she said. /*\
Transvestites also participate in prostitution, especially with unwary foreigners. Male homosexuals and child prostitutes who created Asia’s reputation for sex tourism are concentrated in major metropolitan cities.
Early History of Prostitution in the Philippines
Dr. Jose Florante J. Leyson wrote in the Encyclopedia of Sexuality: Tribal wars between the aborigines in the Philippine islands turned the vanquished into slaves for labor or cannibalism, but not sexual slaves. When Chinese merchants started trading with the inhabitants of the archipelago in 960 C.E., they intermarried with native women, but did not sexually exploit the women. With the advent of Spanish colonists in the late 1500s, a flourishing slave trade was established between the Philippines, the Caribbean, and Spain. Anecdotal reports revealed that some Filipina slaves were sold as “exotic sex objects” or prostitutes to European brothels. When Pope Gregory XIV abolished slavery in the Philippines in 1591, middle-class Europeans started to immigrate to the archipelago, but the sexual exploitation of Filipinas by the Spanish colonists continued. [Source: Jose Florante J. Leyson, M.D., Encyclopedia of Sexuality, 2001 |~|]
During World War 11 (1941-1944), the Japanese Imperial Army forced Philippine women from Manila and surrounding towns to serve as “comfort girls” (military prostitutes) to provide sexual favors to all Japanese soldiers serving in the Philippines and in the Pacific region. In the 1990s, with international (legal) backing, these comfort girls were partially compensated for their humiliation and moral sufferings. When the American troops liberated the Philippines from Japanese imperialism in October 1945, many American soldiers left illegitimate Amerasian children behind. The mothers of these children and their Amerasian children were social outcasts. In order for these mothers to survive, they became part-time prostitutes in the rural areas for single laborers and traveling salesmen and in the cities with all kinds of customers. |~|
Impact of the U.S. Military and the Vietnam War on the Sex Trade in the Philippines
According to government figures, more than 10.4 million Filipinos live and work overseas, taking jobs ranging from low-skill domestic work in the Middle East and Hong Kong to jobs as emergency-room nurses in Canada and Europe. Most Filipinos who go overseas for work are sent to Middle Eastern countries, often laboring in difficult and dangerous conditions in order to send money to their families in the Philippines. In 1947, President Roxas signed a military agreement granting twenty-two military bases to the United States. In the following year, the two largest U.S. military bases in the Far East, the Naval Subic Bay and Clark Air Force Base, were established north of Manila. Angeles City, located near Clark Air Force Base, later became the “Mecca of Sex Trade,” the military adult-entertainment capital of the Philippines, with every variety of prostitution, exotic bars, pornography, and sex tourism conceivable. [Source: Jose Florante J. Leyson, M.D., Encyclopedia of Sexuality, 2001 |~|]
The origin of the sex trade in Thailand and the Philippines as it exits today has origins in the Vietnam War when soldiers and navy men, that before this period had a reputation of being gentlemen, found themselves in an unwinnable war and needed a release from the stress. In their time off they caroused bars in Bangkok, Saigon and Manila and girls attracted by money came to meet the demand.
In his book “Fall From Glory”, Gregory L Vistica wrote, "respect for women was pretty much non-existent at Subic Bay. The girls working bars in the pasties and G-strings were 'hostitutes' and 'L.B.F.M.'s (little Brown F^^^ Machines). The Navy tacitly sanctioned this trade. Commanding officers used a formula to decide when to order troops to stop having sex with local prostitutes: 30 days—the normal course of treatment for venereal disease—before they arrived home."
"In the mid-'70s, the brass prepared a film called "Sex and the Naval Aviator," to explain to wives the intense pressure on pilots, to rationalize their need for physical release after they had endured so much under fire. But the production was deemed to embarrassing and was never released."
Book: “Fall From Glory” by Gregory L Vistica (Simon & Schuster, 1996)
Modern Prostitution in the Philippines
Dr. Jose Florante J. Leyson wrote in the Encyclopedia of Sexuality: “With the advent of information technology and global travel, the old part-time prostitutes have moved to the big cities. Prostitution survives because of poverty, the commercialization of human relations, and the sustained carnal demand. Although for different reasons, all social classes made their contributions to the trade in sexual services. The rich are looking for entertainment and diversity of sexual practices that they would never dare to ask from their wives. These respectable matrons are assigned by society only to bear and raise children, manage households (sometimes businesses), and organize social activities. The out-of-town students, immigrant workers, and wayward youths may be looking for their first sexual experiences and to combat the loneliness of being separated from their family for the first time. The poor frequent the brothels to affirm their masculinity by using many women or to relieve their loneliness. [Source: Jose Florante J. Leyson, M.D., Encyclopedia of Sexuality, 2001 |~|]
As in most other countries, there are three types of prostitutes or sex working girls in the Philippines: streetwalkers, entertainment girls (hostitutes), and call girls or high-class prostitutes. Streetwalkers are not common, are usually self-employed, and many have pimps. Their safety is at jeopardy on the streets. The majority of the prostitutes fall under the category of entertainment girls. These hostitutes include bar girls, nightclub hostesses (waitresses), masseuses, exotic dancers, and those that work in brothels. They are usually business employees and have contact managers (sophisticated pimps). Their safety is secure because they work inside an establishment. However, they cannot refuse clients who are produced by agencies and their managers. They cannot set the prices for their services. Some massage parlors are commercial fronts for prostitutes who offer their services from oral sex to regular intercourse ($25 to $65 US). |~|
Call girls comprise approximate about a third of the female sex-worker population. Self-employed or autonomous, they usually do not have managers. They advertise their services in specialized magazines disguised as escort services for sophisticated gentlemen and sometimes ladies. Hostitutes and call girls advertise their services through word of mouth, by taxi drivers, bar bouncers, club managers/owners, and hotel bell captains. These agents receive part of the price in exchange for referring clients. In the large sophisticated hotels, the bell captain may have an album with pictures of different prostitutes from which guests may choose. In 1997, a new phenomenon emerged, the Japosakis, Filipina hostitutes who return home from sex work in Japan and continue serving their Japanese special clientele or sugar daddies on their periodic “business” trips to the archipelago. Recently, there are also reports of an increasing number of gigallos or toy boys who provide escort services and pleasures for lonely matrons and wealthy widows. |~|
Government Monitoring of Prostitute in the Philippines
Dr. Jose Florante J. Leyson wrote in the Encyclopedia of Sexuality: Although prostitution is still illegal, Filipino society believes that some regulation is always needed, based on the premise that prostitution is regulated in order to minimize the damage to society. Local city councils may require filing an application with the city to establish a brothel, indicating the location for legal reasons and/or tax purposes. Local authorities may also restrict brothels to certain areas and regulate any signs that would identify it as a brothel. Prostitutes cannot reside anywhere other than at the brothel itself, which is her official domicile. Brothels also have to have a bedroom for each working woman. The women cannot show themselves at the balconies or in a window, nor can they solicit in the streets. In order to work in a brothel, a woman has to register with the sanitaryhealth authorities (Bureau of Health). The authorities will check whether she is a victim of deceit or coercion and advise her that help and assistance is available from legal authorities. [Source: Jose Florante J. Leyson, M.D., Encyclopedia of Sexuality, 2001 |~|]
Each prostitute is given a “sanitary notebook” with her picture, personal data, registration number (if any), and the main articles of the decree that concern her rights as a provider of a service. Her rights include being free to stay or quit the brothel in which she lives and works, debts cannot be used to compel her to stay in a given brothel, and no one can subject her to any abuse. Each prostitute has to undergo mandatory monthly medical examinations for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). If an STD is diagnosed, the brothel pays for medical treatment. The sex worker must show her sanitary notebook to any customer that asks to see it. The manager of the brothel cannot accept any “prostitute-candidate” or applicant who has not first registered and passed a medical examination. The manager also has to report immediately to the sanitary authorities whenever a prostitute is ill, be this an STD or non-sexual disease. |~|
It is easy to imagine the rampant corruption that this naive attempt to protect customers and suppliers of contractual sex alike has produced. Police protection is bought, violations are ignored, and politicians and judges are bribed, often on the pretext of protecting the free practice of a fully consensual sex by the client and sex worker. In reality, this law and its application or lack thereof does little to protect the health of the women and their clients. The women have no protection from customers already infected. The prostitutes can request that their clients wear condoms, but cannot demand the performance of safe sex practices. The clients are not subject to compulsory medical “control,” and many may be infected but not show any symptoms while others suffer in silence and continue practicing unsafe sex with other prostitutes, lovers, and even wives. |~|
Manila's Red Light District
The heart of Manila's red light district is on the Avenue de Pilar, a street lined with karaoke bars and sleazy night clubs catering primarily to Japanese, Korean, American, European and Australian male sex tourists. The hookers and sidewalk touts are ferocious, practically wrestling potential customers into their bars or hotels. Inside the bars, girls in black and red negligees do bored and uninspired dances in front of an audience that looks like humanity's version of toxic waste.
Many of the girls are barely in (not of out) their teens. Some paint their face with garish make-up to look older. Others look scared and as if they be more comfortable playing with dolls than administering oral sex. When asked, most of these girls will say they are 20 even though most likely they are much younger than that. The government has gone through the trouble of issuing identification that indicate the girls don’t have AIDS or venereal diseases. Many of the cards however are counterfeit.
In 1989, I was at one bar on the Avenue de Pilar at closing time. Unleashed from the pretense of their trade, the girls finally got a chance act their age. While they placed chairs on tables and mopped the floor they giggled, danced and sang to sappy Tagalog songs playing on the juke box. My friend and I did a couple of slow dances with the girls standing on our feet. The feeling was more fatherly than sexual. The scene was so wholesome that all that was missing was a pillow fight. The night was like a double feature of "Night of the Living Dead" and "Ozzie and Harriet."
Prostitutes, Strikes and Money in the Philippines
Some prostitutes like their jobs because the money is good. Many bar workers and prostitutes staged protests in 1991 an 1992 against the closing of Subic navy base. A sex worker who worked at the Pussycat Club in Olngapo told Newsweek she began work at a bar where she was paid once cent on each bottle of beer she sold and $8 for each sailor she had sex with. “In the club you pretend. You pretend you’re happy.” She gave birth to an Amerasian son and was back at work 10 days later.”
A typical Filipina prostitute begins working in her teens and usually retires before she reaches her late 20s. If she gets pregnant she has to quit or get an abortion. Most do the latter. Many take antibiotics as a preventative measure against sexually transmitted diseases but take them so long their resistance is reduced and they get sick a lot.
The children of three Filipina prostitutes were given $35 million each because they were fathered by DHL founder Larry Hillblom, who liked to hang out Filipino bars and died in plane crash and left behind a fortune of $550 million. One of the Filipina prostitutes claimed she met Hillblom in a Manila-area nightclub in October 1994 and said the tycoon was drawn to her because she was a virgin and took care of her after she got pregnant. The children of the girls were linked to Hillblom by DNA samples taken from a mole that was his that was removed at a San Francisco hospital.
Sex Tourism in the Philippines
In the 1980s, jets planes full of Japanese men arrived in Thailand and the Philippines on per-paid sex tours that included airfare, accommodations, transfers and a local girl waiting for them in their room. Organized sex tourism doesn't really exist any more. Most sex tourists are individuals, groups of friends or couples.
In the early 2000s, Dr. Jose Florante J. Leyson wrote in the Encyclopedia of Sexuality: “The Philippines has always been known as the “Pearl of the Orient Seas,” the Land of the Three Ss - Sun, Sand, and Sea. A fourth “S,” Sex, sold in “coolly” wrapped packages, has emerged to the point where it has already warranted the United Nations’ attention: sex tourism involving child prostitutes as young as 6 years old. [Source: Jose Florante J. Leyson, M.D., Encyclopedia of Sexuality, 2001 |~|]
“Angeles City in Pampanga, north of Manila, once home of the mighty Clark U.S. Air Base, is now being developed as an international airport. But the new airport has also become the center of sex tours to the Philippines, openly promoted abroad, arranged by Filipino tour operators and their foreign counterparts, with attractive come-ons for men seeking sexual activities with “virginal” or child prostitutes who they hope are free of STD and HIV infections.|~|
“While the government is making major arrests in this trade, and sex establishments are regularly closed down, the front page of major dailies show bikini-clad young girls being led away by operatives, but never the brothel owners, the tour operators, their cohorts, and pimps. The Philippine Congress is still struggling to pass a law making a customer of a child prostitute criminally liable, even if he does not engage the services of a pimp. An increase of the maximum punishment for child labor and exploitation to twenty years was sought. The 1995 law set the punishment for child prostitution at twenty years in prison; the punishment for pornography and pedophilia, however, remained unchanged. |~|
“Sex tourism is the third-highest money-making industry in the Philippines. But the current penalties and enforcement policies do nothing to have an impact on the business. As in many other countries, the prostitutes are arrested, but not the clients, managers, and others whose enormous profits make this business so attractive. The punishment for committing prostitution is a US$500 fine or twelve years in jail. While this law, in effect for three decades, applies to women dancing in the nude or in scanty bikini tongs, a major element in the prostitution trade, arrests are seldom made because of corruption and bribery. |~|
“In order to reduce the negative moral and economic effects of prostitution, government and some non-government agencies are working together to rehabilitate former prostitutes or entertainment girls who retire or change their “profession.” The government’s Department of Social Welfare and Development has programs to teach these ex-prostitutes other work alternatives and technical skills as a means to a decent living. A civic action and rehabilitation group, Marriage Encounter, is also training married former prostitutes to help them move back into mainstream society and divert single women from the sex trade by improving their personal skills for future relationships and family life. But funds and enthusiasm for such social programs are too limited. |~|
Prostitution Near Subic Bay and Clark Air Base
In Angeles City, a town outside Clark Air Base, U.S. servicemen have been replaced by lonely old men lured by young girls selling sex at very cheap prices. Describing the scene in Angeles, Ages Chan wrote in the Japan Times, “Girls in the go-go bar wear tiny white tops and short skirts. They dance on the tables waiting for customers. Once they sit down with a customer, the customers hands move all over their bodies.”
Describing the scene in the 1990s in Olangapo, a town of 120,000 people outside Subic Bay, Edward Gargan wrote in the New York Times, "When the sunk sinks, the jukeboxes crank, men in T-shirts and jeans straggle the bars, and scantily clad women scan the tables for prospects. More often than not, a young man will sidle up to a newcomer an ask, 'You want a young girl? Fifteen only.'" When the base was open in the 1980s, there were 16,000 prostitutes working in Olangapo. Now there are only around 500.
Reporting from Angeles City, John M. Glionna wrote in the Los Angeles Times, “At a club called Koko Yoko, balding men with bulging bellies sit at an outdoor bar, sipping beers and leering at the young girls who pass on the model's runway gone wrong called Fields Avenue. Many of the girls weigh barely 90 pounds, their high heels pushing their almost adolescent bodies at perverse angles. There are cross-dressers fooling no one, calling out to men with tattoos, Popeye forearms and gray hair on their backs. "Lady boy!" they squeal. "Lady boy!" Some men pass by with girls one-third their age, swinging their hands together like a couple on a first date. Others cavort with three girls at once, the women all clutching their client like daughters competing for Daddy's attention. [Source: John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times, August 16, 2009 ***]
“Fields Avenue, the main pedestrian drag in Angeles City, is a legacy of the time when this row of run-down bars was the romping ground of restless young American airmen stationed at Clark Air Base. The U.S. base closed in 1992, and the often-randy airmen have gone with it. But the girls, the sex, the round-the-clock raunchiness remain. Only the customers have changed. A thriving sex tourism trade attracts foreign customers by the thousands in search of something they cannot find back home: girls young enough to be their granddaughters selling sex for the price of a burger and fries. ***
“A young dancer in tight red hip-hugger pants and matching sports bra acknowledges that Fields Avenue may not be pretty, but the money is good. She rolls her eyes at two overweight men who pass by looking like large reptiles dressed in children's clothing. Sure, the sex is disgusting, she says. But at least it's over quickly. Outside Koko Yoko, the doorman, a 33-year-old paraplegic, perches on a wheeled wooden pallet. He says his father was an American who once served at Clark, his mother a local girl. He contracted polio when he was 11 and has worked here ever since. The street, he says, takes care of him. Soon, an idle stripper climbs onto his back, rubbing her crotch into the back of his neck. All along Fields Avenue, the come-on banners with their Web addresses advertise good pay (up to $10 a day) for hostess jobs. But applicants must speak Korean, Japanese or Chinese.” ***
Sex Scene in Angeles City Today
John M. Glionna wrote in the Los Angeles Times, “Once populated by men in their early 20s who started each day with 100 push-ups, the place is now home to older men who need help pushing themselves out of bed in the morning. Most are bused up from Manila, an hour away, on golf and sex package deals. This is no quasi-innocent boys' night out. Rather, it's a single-minded realm of weary-looking loners on a resolute hunt that smacks of feeding an addiction. Many are ex-military men reliving former glories, Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper wannabes, some gathering at the local American Legion post before embarking into the night. [Source: John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times, August 16, 2009 ***]
“There is a one-armed man, a retiree with a walker and another dapper gentleman who strolls along in a dress shirt, twirling an umbrella, whistling a private tune. Many head to the bars with the red-light special called "The Early-Release": Buy your girl 10 drinks and she's yours, no questions asked. Nobody asks questions here. Nobody gives their name. Credit cards are a joke; who wants to leave behind any economic traces that they ever set foot here? ***
“Nearby a saggy-faced Australian lights a cigarette. He's been in Angeles City for about a month, his last stop on a sex circuit from Bangkok to Manila after getting laid off from his electrician's job in Sydney. In Thailand, he says, the girls didn't speak the language. Manila hookers were too streetwise, the bars too spread out. But this is Easy Street. He can sit atop his bar stool and ogle hundreds of passing girls fresh from the countryside who perfect the tricks of their trade before moving on to The Show in Manila. The Australian signals a street vendor and buys some knockoff Viagra. He says he prefers the girls working one street over, who cost only 500 pesos, or about $10, apiece. "Anything goes here," he says, lighting another cigarette. He leans over to offer a bit of Fields Avenue inside information: "You can get a young girl here to do anything if you promise to marry her." ***
“A balding man pulls up on his motorcycle, greeting several other men loudly in German. They already have their catch, and girls jump on the back as the cycles roar off. At the Tourist Assistance Booth, Odysius Garche says the older customers are better behaved than the U.S. airmen were. "I just tell them: 'The girls are inside. Go make your own deal.' " Nearby, a chubby American with glasses eats a hot dog. He says he's a bar manager, but offers no details. He came to Angeles City from California, to follow up on a chat-room hookup. He ended up on Fields Avenue, drinking late with the dancers, hearing their stories. "This is clean fun," he says. "There's no sex shows. These girls are not slaves. They have minds of their own." ***
“Behind him, women call out from the doors of bars with names like the Doll House, Club Lancelot, Treasure Island, Club Cambodia, the Blue Nile and the Amsterdam. Suddenly, a group of twentysomething men storms past, laughing and arm-punching. The news spreads and girls pop their heads out the doorways to catch a glimpse of boys their own age. One calls after them with a deal she hopes they can't refuse: "Free!" she says, laughing. ***
Philippine Diplomats Involved in Prostituting Filipinas in the Middle East
In 2013, the Philippine government said it was investigating allegations that its diplomatic personnel have trafficked Filipino women in the Middle East who were seeking refuge there. Floyd Whaley wrote in the New York Times, “ Philippine diplomatic and labor officials are alleged to have forced distressed Filipino women, in countries like Kuwait and Jordan, into prostitution in return for safe passage back to the Philippines. “There are allegations that this has become institutionalized in terms of the establishment of sex rings and so forth,” the Philippine secretary of foreign affairs, Albert del Rosario, said at a news conference. “Investigations are being conducted to ascertain the validity of these allegations,” he said. [Source: Floyd Whaley, New York Times, June 24, 2013 ^]
“The investigation by Mr. del Rosario’s department has involved the recalling of 13 heads of diplomatic missions throughout the Middle East, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. The ambassadors were not implicated in the allegations but were called upon to provide information, he said. The investigation also found three victims who alleged that they were victimized by Filipino diplomatic or labor officials, Mr. del Rosario said. One suspect has been identified and recalled to the Philippines. ^
“A Philippine congressman, Walden Bello, opened an inquiry into the allegations of abuse in early June after receiving information about officials extorting sex in exchange for flights home. “Our initial investigation into sex for flights revealed something bigger,” Mr. Bello said Monday by telephone. “They were running a prostitution ring out of Philippine embassies in Kuwait and Oman. The information was shocking.” Mr. Bello’s investigation alleged that a Filipino diplomat in Damascus had sex with five distressed Filipino female workers seeking shelter in the embassy, in separate incidents. The congressman also reported that a senior Filipino labor official in Jordan was prostituting Filipino women for $1,000 per night. The investigation found another labor official in Kuwait who is accused of running a similar operation using Filipino workers seeking shelter. ^
““These criminals parading as officials must be stripped of their positions, recalled to the Philippines and prosecuted,” Mr. Bello said during a June 18 press conference. Mr. del Rosario said that a hot line had been established for other victims to come forward and that it was producing additional information, he said. “We will be able to punish the guilty, and we also will be able to review all the policies and procedures governing our conduct pertaining to cases such as this,” he said.” ^
58 Arrested in Philippines over Global 'Sextortion'
In May 2014, fifty-eight people were arrested in the Philippines for their involvement in a giant, global Internet "sextortion" network, local police and Interpol said. AFP reported: “Victims in foreign countries have been lured by people in the Philippines into giving sexually explicit photos or videos about themselves online, then blackmailed for many thousands of dollars, the authorities said. "The scale of this extortion network is massive," the director of Interpol's Digital Crime Centre, Sanjay Virmani said. "These crimes are not limited to any one country and nor are the victims. That's why international cooperation in investigating these crimes is essential." [Source: AFP, May 2, 2014]
Philippine police chief Alan Purisima said the 58 people arrested would be charged over a range of crimes, including engaging in child pornography, extortion and using technologies to commit fraud. It was not immediately clear whether all 58 arrested were Filipinos, although authorities initially made no mention of any foreigners who may have been directly involved in the Philippines. However, authorities emphasised the Philippines was not the hub of the global sextortion network, only that the current investigation had focused on the Southeast Asian nation.
Purisima said the scam typically involved someone posing as an attractive, young lady making contact with people overseas via Facebook and other social media, then seeking to establish a relationship with them. "After getting acquainted with the victims… they engage in cybersex, and this will be recorded unknown to the victims," he said. "They then threaten to release it to friends and relatives." He said victims had paid between 500 pesos ($11) and 500,000 pesos ($11,000). While he said elderly men were often targeted, children were also victims. A Scottish police chief who also briefed reporters at the press conference said one boy in Scotland had committed suicide after being extorted. He said the boy was 17 when he killed himself.
In the late 1990s, countries like Guyana, the Philippines, Poland, Netherlands Antilles, Sao Tome and the Dominican Republic earned a large amounts foreign exchange from audiotext service (sex-lines and other pay phone service) who routed their calls through phone companies in these countries. The way the system worked was that an American paid his bill to his American long-distance phone company, who shared the money with the foreign phone company that received the call. The foreign phone companies in turn shared their revenues with the audiotext services that used the exchange for the foreign phone company.
Group of Former Prostitutes Helps Prostitutes in the Philippines
In 2011, the Philippines Inquirer reported: “As the night grows older, this part of the city becomes more alive. Women in low-cut, body-hugging clothes start appearing on the streets of Quezon City’s red light district. Some make their move on potential customers. Also in the area are other women dressed more conservatively in jeans and shirt. They are not around to earn money for the night. Belonging to Bagong Kamalayan Collective Inc. (BKCI), they have come to talk to their scantily clad “sisters” about their rights and to try to inspire them to rebuild their lives.Liza Gonzales, recounting the scene to the Philippine Daily Inquirer, knows what life is like in the red light district. She was once one of those scantily clad women working in that neighborhood. [Source: Rima Jessamine M. Granali, Philippine Daily Inquirer, September 26, 2011 /*]
“Most of the BKCI staff “used to ‘gimmick’ in Cubao and Quezon Avenue,” Gonzales said in a recent interview. “We want prostituted women to see that they can have a stable livelihood even if they quit,” Gonzales said. Today, BKCI’s original five members have grown to 50. They have found a source of income not just for themselves but for other victims of prostitution. BKCI recently opened a cooperative canteen. “Hopefully our canteen becomes a big, big restaurant so we can help more women,” Gonzales said in Filipino. The place is barely half the size of the other eateries along a street in Quezon City, but BKCI members talk about it with pride. What they have now is a far cry from what they had when the Inquirer first met the group in 2005. /*\
“They had no canteen then. Engaged in food catering, all they had were a few utensils for cooking meals which they delivered to meetings of various other advocacy groups. To reheat the dishes, they would bring along a “super kalan” (liquefied petroleum gas tank with a built-in burner). For a time, they also offered laundry service, washing clothes with bare hands. Having no weighing scale, they would go to a nearby market to weigh their clients’ laundry. They also ventured into small businesses, such as selling homemade soap, but these didn’t bring in much money. Three years ago, their money problems worsened. “We didn’t even have a centavo in the bank,” Gonzales said. /*\
“There were times when they had no money to buy food. “When you have nothing to feed your children, it’s tempting to turn to prostitution for fast money but because of our good foundation, we remained strong. We survived without going back,” Gonzales said. Even as they struggled to live, they still conducted educational seminars and scoured red light districts in Quezon City and elsewhere on the chance they might help other women trapped in prostitution. Support from allied NGOs and their strong belief that “there is life after prostitution” kept them going, Gonzales said. /*\
“Eventually members learned skills from livelihood training seminars. Some even attended baking classes at Miriam College. Initially, they thought of setting up a bakeshop. But they settled for a canteen because the girls found it difficult to make bread, Gonzales said. With their personal savings and donations from CATW-AP and other supporters, the group earlier this year finally managed to open their 9-square-meter canteen. Their profit and donations help them pursue their mission, support their families and send themselves and their children to school. /*\
“Gonzales is the only founder left in the organization. Carrying thermos, packets of instant coffee and bread, BKCI members still pound the streets of red light districts. Over coffee, they would talk with prostitution victims about laws protecting women’s rights and other issues. “Most of them are not aware of their rights. When authorities take them to the precinct, they assume that cases are already filed against them even without any inquest,” Gonzales said. Afraid to stay behind bars, women simply give cash and their cell phones or, worse, give cops sexual favors in exchange for their freedom. /*\
“BKCI and CATW-AP are lobbying for the passage of the antiprostitution bill, which shifts criminal liabilities from prostituted persons to customers, pimps, brothel and nightclub owners and law enforcement officers. The measure has been pending in Congress for 11 years. Gonzales resents calling women in prostitution sex workers or prostitutes. “We call them ‘prostituted women’ because prostitution is not a job but a violation of human rights.” Gonzales said her group did not force women to leave their trade. “They have to reach the point when they no longer want to be there.” “We have healed our wounds,” Gonzales said. “We may not be able to forgive those who abused us, those who raped us. But to be able to heal, to go back to the community and freely express ourselves and fight for our rights, we feel blessed.” /*\
Prostitutes helped by the Former Prostitute Group
The Philippines Inquirer reported: “Gina (not her real name), one of the “survivors” that the BKCI had plucked from the streets, recalled a time when she could not even pay the rent for her family’s apartment and she had beg the landlord not to throw them out into the streets. In those hard times, other members lived in the CATW-AP office. One of them, Rem (also a pseudonym), was attending high school and had to sleep in the director’s office, where CATW-AP employees also worked. [Source: Rima Jessamine M. Granali, Philippine Daily Inquirer, September 26, 2011 /*]
Gina has five children who are all studying. Her eldest is now in college. Rem, 25, said: “Before, I could not even imagine myself going back to school. It seemed impossible.” She is now pursuing a bachelor degree in cooperatives at Polytechnic University of the Philippines. Her sister, 20-year-old Rose (also not her real name) and also a survivor from prostitution, is now a fourth year high school student at Miriam College for adult education. /*\
“The two sisters want to take up courses on social development so they can better assist victims of sex trafficking. With diplomas and newly acquired skills, some members have left BKCI to focus on their own lives. But others have remained because “we need to continue fighting for the rights of other victims of prostitution and be their voice while they are still in the trade,” Gonzales said. Said Gina: “I am most fulfilled because I am no longer on the streets.” /*\
Image Sources:
Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, Lonely Planet Guides, Library of Congress, Philippines Department of Tourism, Compton’s Encyclopedia, The Guardian, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, AFP, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic Monthly, The Economist, Foreign Policy, Wikipedia, BBC, CNN, and various books, websites and other publications.
Last updated June 2015
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In Philippine red-light district, an uphill struggle to battle trafficking and abuses
ANGELES CITY, Philippines — The girls onstage were numbered, not named.
Silently, they shuffled in a circle around the mirrored platform in a basement dance bar; arms folded around bare stomachs, eyes fixed on the scuffed metal floor.
At the back of the stage, a 14-year-old in black heels hunched her shoulders and tried to shrink into the shadows. It has been more than a year since she was trafficked into the dimly lit nightclub about 50 miles north of Manila.
She is among hundreds of girls supplied each year in Angeles City to meet the demands of foreign men paying for sex — many of whom are American.
A bell sounded and a tourist entered the bar. Under the gaze of her manager, the girl stepped forward and forced a smile. Her knees shook in the spotlight.
The Philippine city of Angeles — home to a former U.S. military base — has long been a hub for “sex tourism”: illegal prostitution between foreign men and Filipina girls often still in their teens and trafficked into the industry, or young women pushed into the sex trade by family pressure and economic desperation.
The Philippines sex industry and potential for continued exploitation, however, remains indirectly aided by legislative loopholes and apparent indifference from authorities, according to activists.
Prostitution is illegal in the Philippines and commercial sex with a child under the age of 18 is rape. But bar managers can circumnavigate laws. Girls and women are presented as “entertainers” rather than sex workers, and payments for sex are packaged as “fines” paid to the bars by a patron on behalf of a woman leaving her shift early.
Meanwhile, the government of President Rodrigo Duterte has devoted few resources to battling the Philippines’ illicit sex industry even as it wages brutal crackdowns on the drug trade.
Duterte, in fact, has appeared to invite foreign men to the country with the suggestion that young women are waiting.
“They’re all on the beach sunbathing,” Duterte said during his State of the Nation address in July. Last year, he joked that he would attract visitors to the country with the promise of “42 virgins.”
Local leaders are left to mostly handle the repercussions alone.
“I will not give up on this,” said Angeles’ newly elected mayor, Carmelo “Pogi” Lazatin Jr., in July, adding that ending all forms of prostitution in the city was top-priority. “But it will take time. There is a lot of resistance.”
Activists' warnings
As the sex industry has become more lucrative, corrupt officials have taken steps to give it a veneer of lawfulness, activists say.
More than 9,000 bar girls are registered as “entertainers,” but the government mandates they take sexually transmitted disease tests on a weekly basis — a move criticized by activists as a marketing trick to present the city’s sex industry as clean and tourist-friendly.
Meanwhile, bar owners often pretend to obey minimum-age requirements of 18.
Unregistered, freelance sex workers and trafficking victims abound. The youngest girl interviewed by The Fuller Project was 10 years old.
Next year, a new airport terminal on the outskirts of Angeles is set to triple the number of visitors to the region and bring a possible expansion of sex trafficking and abuses, human rights advocates warn.
“If tourism doubles, then the vulnerability of children doubles, too,” said Dolores Alforte, Philippines executive director for the international nonprofit End Child Prostitution And Trafficking, known as ECPAT.
In July 2018, the then-mayor of Angeles, Edgardo Pamintuan, and Angeles-based nonprofit founder Robert Wagner met with John McGregor, then the human rights officer of the U.S. Embassy in Manila.
They proposed a six-point plan for American assistance in holding U.S. citizens accountable for possible crimes related to exploiting Filipina women and girls, including the placement of closed-circuit TV cameras outside the bars and a kiosk where sex workers and trafficking victims could report abuse and ask for help.
Neither Pamintuan nor Wagner have seen any action taken since.
The U.S. Embassy in Manila declined to make a public comment. But past statements by U.S. officials have emphasized a strong partnership with Philippine law enforcement on human trafficking and related issues.
In June, the State Departement’s Trafficking in Persons Report listed the Philippines among the top-tier countries with laws in place to battle human trafficking.
“Although the [Philippine] government meets the minimum standards, it did not vigorously investigate and prosecute officials allegedly involved in trafficking crimes,” the report added.
Back in the darkened bar, an American man beckoned the 14-year-old down from the stage. She told him that her name was Rose and that she had just turned 18: two lies, taken from the fake papers used to secure her job in the bar. A manager informed the tourist that it will cost 2,000 Philippine pesos, or $38, to take Rose back to his hotel for a “short time.” Two crumpled blue notes are passed between palms.
“They remind me of my grandpa,” Rose said later.
The Washington Post does not identify minors in sex cases or victims of sex crimes.
Of the 30 girls in the bar that evening, Rose thought she was the youngest, but she wasn’t sure.
'No jurisdiction'
More than 150 women and girls interviewed by The Fuller Project in Angeles City said they wanted to leave prostitution but didn’t know how.
Those younger than 18 were scared that “rescue” would involve leaving their friends or families. Many were afraid that under current anti-prostitution laws, reporting foreign predators to the local police could land the girls in jail.
“It’s just normal,” said Angel, 14, who said she was trafficked into the city’s sex industry when she was 12 years old by an American man. She now works “freelance” with a group of nine friends. All are underage, she said.
“It happens to all of us,” she added.
Under the 2003 PROTECT Act , U.S. citizens suspected of committing child sexual exploitation abroad can be charged in the United States, regardless of where their offense takes place.
But despite a team of U.S. law enforcement agents in Manila specifically tasked with investigating Americans who sexually abuse children across the Philippines, there have been few convictions.
“We’ve identified American citizens going to places like the Philippines with the purpose of having sex with kids who are poor,” said Stacie Harris, an associate deputy attorney general and national coordinator for Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking at the Justice Department.
But the PROTECT Act has no reach over U.S. citizens seeking out adult sex workers while abroad.
“You have a U.S. tourist who goes over and picks up someone on a street corner,” said Harris, “and we have no jurisdiction over that.”
This article was reported by The Fuller Project for International Reporting, a nonprofit newsroom investigating issues that most impact women.
In Philippine Red-Light District, an Uphill Struggle to Battle Trafficking and Abuses
This article was originally published in The Washington Post .
ANGELES CITY, Philippines — The girls onstage were numbered, not named.
Silently, they shuffled in a circle around the mirrored platform in a basement dance bar; arms folded around bare stomachs, eyes fixed on the scuffed metal floor.
At the back of the stage, a 14-year-old in black heels hunched her shoulders and tried to shrink into the shadows. It has been more than a year since she was trafficked into the dimly lit nightclub about 50 miles north of Manila.
She is among hundreds of girls supplied each year in Angeles City to meet the demands of foreign men paying for sex — many of whom are American.
A bell sounded and a tourist entered the bar. Under the gaze of her manager, the girl stepped forward and forced a smile. Her knees shook in the spotlight.
The Philippine city of Angeles — home to a former U.S. military base — has long been a hub for “sex tourism”: illegal prostitution between foreign men and Filipina girls often still in their teens and trafficked into the industry, or young women pushed into the sex trade by family pressure and economic desperation.
The Philippines sex industry and potential for continued exploitation, however, remains indirectly aided by legislative loopholes and apparent indifference from authorities, according to activists.
Prostitution is illegal in the Philippines and commercial sex with a child under the age of 18 is rape. But bar managers can circumnavigate laws. Girls and women are presented as “entertainers” rather than sex workers, and payments for sex are packaged as “fines” paid to the bars by a patron on behalf of a woman leaving her shift early.
Meanwhile, the government of President Rodrigo Duterte has devoted few resources to battling the Philippines’ illicit sex industry even as it wages brutal crackdowns on the drug trade.
Duterte, in fact, has appeared to invite foreign men to the country with the suggestion that young women are waiting.
“They’re all on the beach sunbathing,” Duterte said during his State of the Nation address in July. Last year, he joked that he would attract visitors to the country with the promise of “42 virgins.”
Local leaders are left to mostly handle the repercussions alone.
“I will not give up on this,” said Angeles’ newly elected mayor, Carmelo “Pogi” Lazatin Jr., in July, adding that ending all forms of prostitution in the city was top-priority. “But it will take time. There is a lot of resistance.”
Activists’ warnings
As the sex industry has become more lucrative, corrupt officials have taken steps to give it a veneer of lawfulness, activists say.
More than 9,000 bar girls are registered as “entertainers,” but the government mandates they take sexually transmitted disease tests on a weekly basis — a move criticized by activists as a marketing trick to present the city’s sex industry as clean and tourist-friendly.
Meanwhile, bar owners often pretend to obey minimum-age requirements of 18.
Unregistered, freelance sex workers and trafficking victims abound. The youngest girl interviewed by The Fuller Project was 10 years old.
Next year, a new airport terminal on the outskirts of Angeles is set to triple the number of visitors to the region and bring a possible expansion of sex trafficking and abuses, human rights advocates warn.
“If tourism doubles, then the vulnerability of children doubles, too,” said Dolores Alforte, Philippines executive director for the international nonprofit End Child Prostitution And Trafficking, known as ECPAT.
In July 2018, the then-mayor of Angeles, Edgardo Pamintuan, and Angeles-based nonprofit founder Robert Wagner met with John McGregor, then the human rights officer of the U.S. Embassy in Manila.
They proposed a six-point plan for American assistance in holding U.S. citizens accountable for possible crimes related to exploiting Filipina women and girls, including the placement of closed-circuit TV cameras outside the bars and a kiosk where sex workers and trafficking victims could report abuse and ask for help.
Neither Pamintuan nor Wagner have seen any action taken since.
The U.S. Embassy in Manila declined to make a public comment. But past statements by U.S. officials have emphasized a strong partnership with Philippine law enforcement on human trafficking and related issues.
In June, the State Departement’s Trafficking in Persons Report listed the Philippines among the top-tier countries with laws in place to battle human trafficking.
“Although the [Philippine] government meets the minimum standards, it did not vigorously investigate and prosecute officials allegedly involved in trafficking crimes,” the report added.
Back in the darkened bar, an American man beckoned the 14-year-old down from the stage. She told him that her name was Rose and that she had just turned 18: two lies, taken from the fake papers used to secure her job in the bar. A manager informed the tourist that it will cost 2,000 Philippine pesos, or $38, to take Rose back to his hotel for a “short time.” Two crumpled blue notes are passed between palms.
“They remind me of my grandpa,” Rose said later.
The Washington Post does not identify minors in sex cases or victims of sex crimes.
Of the 30 girls in the bar that evening, Rose thought she was the youngest, but she wasn’t sure.
‘No jurisdiction’
More than 150 women and girls interviewed by The Fuller Project in Angeles City said they wanted to leave prostitution but didn’t know how.
Those younger than 18 were scared that “rescue” would involve leaving their friends or families. Many were afraid that under current anti-prostitution laws, reporting foreign predators to the local police could land the girls in jail.
“It’s just normal,” said Angel, 14, who said she was trafficked into the city’s sex industry when she was 12 years old by an American man. She now works “freelance” with a group of nine friends. All are underage, she said.
“It happens to all of us,” she added.
Under the 2003 PROTECT Act, U.S. citizens suspected of committing child sexual exploitation abroad can be charged in the United States, regardless of where their offense takes place.
But despite a team of U.S. law enforcement agents in Manila specifically tasked with investigating Americans who sexually abuse children across the Philippines, there have been few convictions.
“We’ve identified American citizens going to places like the Philippines with the purpose of having sex with kids who are poor,” said Stacie Harris, an associate deputy attorney general and national coordinator for Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking at the Justice Department.
But the PROTECT Act has no reach over U.S. citizens seeking out adult sex workers while abroad.
“You have a U.S. tourist who goes over and picks up someone on a street corner,” said Harris, “and we have no jurisdiction over that.”
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Prostituted people face increased risks during the pandemic
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Hazel (not her real name), who works at a mall in Iloilo City, had long known that fellow workers had been forced into prostitution to augment their income. She did not imagine resorting to it herself but during the early months of the pandemic, when lockdowns shut the store that employed her, it was the only option she could turn to.
A single mother of a 10-year-old boy, Hazel said she tried to seek help from relatives but she soon ran out of a lifeline as businesses were closed and almost everyone she knew were also out of work.
She received some assistance from the government, but it was not enough as the lockdowns stretched for months.
When she approached a fellow worker to borrow money, the latter persuaded her to prostitute herself. She gave in out of desperation, she said.
“ Hindi na bale ako, pero ‘yung anak ko ang inaalala ko. Baka magutom at magkasakit. Wala akong magawa sa sitwasyon namin (I cannot just think about myself anymore. I had to worry about my son. He might go hungry and sick. I couldn’t do anything),” Hazel said.
Her colleague introduced her to a “client” who paid her P5,000 (about $100) for sex.
It was the first and last time Hazel prostituted herself. She said the experience was demeaning. “ Hindi na naulit, ang bigat sa konsensya. Pero ano magagawa ko, may anak ako, e (It didn’t happen again. My conscience couldn’t take it. But what was I going to do? I had to do it for my child),” she said.
Hazel said she knew of other mall workers who were forced into a similar situation to survive the pandemic. This reporter spoke with five others who prostituted themselves to put food on the table, but they declined to elaborate on their experiences.
Hundreds engage in prostitution during the pandemic
Nestor Canong, head of the Iloilo City Task Force on Morals and Values Formation, said prostitution took on a new face during the pandemic as some Ilonggos who had lost their jobs at the height of lockdowns were forced into it.
Before the pandemic, he said most of the documented prostitutes in the city were “imported” or natives of neighboring areas. Many of them decided to stop during the pandemic because of the risk of contracting Covid-19.
For others like Hazel, however, it was their only source of income.
Hazel is what the Social Hygiene Clinic of the Iloilo City Health Office refers to as a “freelance sex worker” or FLSW. They work in brothels and the streets, as opposed to Registered Female Sex Workers (RFSW) and Macho Dancers (MD) who work in registered establishments.
Data from the Social Hygiene Clinic shows that while the total numbers dwindled during the pandemic, hundreds continued to prostitute themselves despite the risks and amid lockdowns and other restrictions.
The clinic recorded a total of 520 “commercial sex workers” in 2020 when the pandemic began, which was down from the total 673 the clinic recorded the previous year.
The clinic also recorded at least 213 who engaged in prostitution from January to June in 2021.
The term “sex work” is frowned upon by the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women – Asia Pacific (CATWA), however. Calling it “sex work” recognizes prostitution as work when, in fact, they are victims, said CATWA executive director Jean Enriquez.
Prostitution is outlawed in Iloilo City under Regulation Ordinance No. 2014-377, but the city government introduced “gray areas.”
Under its so-called green card policy, the city’s Social Hygiene Clinic issues cards to “commercial sex workers” as proof that they are free from sexually transmitted infections.
Canong said green cards are not permits for engaging in prostitution. It’s one way of protecting not only their personal health but public health as well.
The green cards also facilitate documentation of the city’s prostituted men and wonen and their regular checkup.
Other countries have introduced workplace health and safety standards for prostituted people as well as legal protections from discrimination.
There could be more freelance sex workers
The Task Force on Moral Values and Formation was formed by the city mayor’s office initially to monitor entertainment and food establishments, spas and other businesses that operate at night.
It later began helping prostituted men and women avail themselves of the services of the local hygiene clinic and obtain other opportunities should they decide to seek a different livelihood.
During the pandemic, Canong was concerned that more of them were not captured by city data because they went freelance.
“When the pandemic hit, some of the nightclubs and pubs stopped operating and their workers were forced to either go home or become freelance commercial sex workers,” he said.
The data only covered those who went to the social hygiene clinic. “We don’t know how many of them are there on the streets who were not reached or went to the clinic to seek help. That’s why we are actively seeking them out for their own welfare, especially in the time of this pandemic,” he said.
In February 2021, days before Valentine’s Day, the Iloilo City task force rounded up 40 “freelance commercial sex workers” —10 males and 30 females—including a 16-year-old.
Most of them lacked “green cards” from the social hygiene clinic. The card is proof that they are free from sexually transmitted infections.
The apprehended prostitutes were booked and processed at the police station, but were later released for lack of facilities where they could be “remitted.”
The minor was turned over to the City Social Welfare Office for processing and intervention, including counselling, before being sent home.
Canong said those who were apprehended, particularly those who lacked green cards, promised to go to the social hygiene clinic.
In many parts of the Philippines, many prostituted men and women also make the transactions on the Internet, said Arnel Sigue, president of the Anti-Trafficking Legal Advocates Society (ATLAS), a group based in neighboring Bacolod City.
It makes it harder to document them, he added.
Increased risks during the pandemic
During the pandemic, prostituted people risked the possibility of contracting the highly transmissible and deadly coronavirus disease on top of the other dangers they regularly faced on the job.
Even as she rationalized what she did for her son’s sake, Hazel remembered how she was so worried that the client might have Covid-19 and infect her. She was tempted to ask him for an RT-PCR result, but didn’t out of fear she might lose the chance to earn.
The task force was concerned that they would trigger an explosion of Covid-19 if they contracted the virus from their clients and then spread it to others.
Many of them were hesitant to avail themselves of free RT-PCR tests offered by the city government. They didn’t want to be forced to undergo quarantine for at least seven days, which could affect their income.
They also faced further discrimination during the pandemic, said Sigue of Atlas
“Before, they were discriminated due to [fears] of sexually transmitted diseases. Now they are further discriminated against due to fear of the virus, which they may contract [from their clients],” Sigue said.
“Their neighbors discriminate against them. They are being ostracized,” he added.
Prostituted people continued to be vulnerable to other health risks such as HIV. There were also reports of human rights abuses and extortion by arresting police officers.
Assistance program on hold
The city government introduced a program where they encourage prostituted people to enroll in the alternative learning system (ALS) under a partnership with the Department of Education.
The ALS was originally meant to help out-of-school youths obtain a higher level of education. Some sex workers who had stopped schooling were able to enroll in high school or college studies under ALS.
Canong said the ALS program became the foundation of his own plan to provide opportunities to commercial sex workers—an alternative livelihood scheme with the help of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda).
Through Tesda courses, workers can acquire skills and competencies to start businesses or work here or abroad.
Canong said most of the city’s prostituted men and women wanted better and less self-demeaning opportunities.
“They also told us that they want to earn in more decent ways. They would say ‘Give us better opportunities and we will leave this kind of work.’”
The program was stopped during the pandemic, however. Canong said city officials were preparing to start the program in 2020 but were stymied by the pandemic.
Canong’s team also concentrated on making sure that public and private establishments observed basic health protocols such as safe physical distancing and wearing of face masks.
Canong said the mayor’s office could allocate part of its discretionary funds to augment the task force’s budget for projects for commercial sex workers once the situation allowed for face-to-face trainings.
“We really want to help them, especially now during the pandemic, but we had to redirect our priorities to Covid-19 response…. Hopefully, if the situation stabilizes, we can proceed in keeping with current protocols,” he said. END
Illustration by Joseph Luigi Almuena
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- Experiences
- Special Coverage
- Autonomy Autonomy is key for women to have the right to their own body and a life free of violence. Autonomy is not something that builds up on its own. We understand autonomy as a path under construction, which is laid out by strengthening women’s movement and organization. Facing violence and the control over women’s bodies means facing the racist and patriarchal capitalist system.
- Demilitarization Demilitarization is a matter of political urgency for many peoples around the world. Challenging the military control over peoples and territories means fighting for peace, for people’s sovereignty, and for a world without violence, imperialism, colonialism, arms race, and warfare. People’s lives are not disposable, and women’s bodies are not battlefields!
- Environmental justice The struggle for environmental justice is the struggle for a world where nature, territories, and the ways of life of the peoples are respected, not destroyed. Fighting for environmental justice is about defending nature and all the people who live in it (and who are nature themselves). It’s about fighting for a sustainable model of production, free from the false solutions of the market.
- Feminist economy Feminist economy is about political thought, practice, and pledge. It points the way to transforming the social organization and the lives of women, whose care work sustains life. Feminist economy challenges the divisions and hierarchies between culture and nature, the public and private realms, and productive and reproductive labor. We depend on each other and we depend on nature. This is why we need to build and practice an economy centered around life.
- Food sovereignty Food sovereignty is a right of the peoples! The struggle for food sovereignty is about fighting for land and healthy food, for decent work, and for the end of exploitation, agribusiness, and large-scale plantations. Women take the primary responsibility for food production and preparation, and they have accumulated this knowledge over a long period of time. Fighting for food sovereignty also means fighting to have women farmers’ work acknowledged as well as to reorganize domestic, care, and food preparation work.
- Movement The movement is both what organizes us and what we organize. In movement, we build anti-capitalist, anti-racist feminism. And we create collective syntheses, change the present, and point the way to the future.
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The Life and Struggles of Victim-Survivors of Prostitution in the Philippines
Capire spoke with myles sanchez and jean enriquez of catw-ap about sexual violence, war on drugs, and other struggles faced by philippines.
Women of the WMW during protests on March 8th, 2020 in the Philippines / Mulheres da MMM durante os protestos do 8 de Março de 2020 nas Filipinas / Mujeres de la MMM durante las protestas del 8 de marzo de 2020 en Filipinas / Femmes de la MMM lors des manifestations du 8 mars 2020 aux Philippines
In Bulacan, a province in the Central Luzón area in the Philippines, Myles Sanchez and other survivors have started a community-based programme, with the help of The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women . In this place, women who survived prostitution found a sanctuary from the violence that haunts their lives and their children, can study and learn a real profession, and have the support they need to build not only economic but also political autonomy. The survivors use the things they learn in their own process to help and organize other women. They assist whom they call sisters in cases of violence and they provide legal aid to get women out of jail when needed.
CATW-AP (its Asia-Pacific chapter) is an international network of feminist groups and organizations fighting domestic and sexual violence, especially prostitution, suffered by women around the globe. In the Philippines, they are part of the National Coordination Body of the World March of Women. Launched in 1988, in New York, USA, during the First Global Conference Against Trafficking in Women, their objectives are to bring attention to and take care of women and girls who are victims of trafficking, prostitution, pornography, sex tourism, and bride selling, by promoting campaigns and policy advocacy. Survivors and victim-survivors are how they call, respectively, the women and girls who were able to escape this reality and the ones who still depend on prostitution. They are assisted by CATW and participate in programs of education, training, and organizational development; empowerment; policy advocacy; and research and documentation.
For this article, Capire talked to Myles Sanchez, a prostitution survivor in the Philipines, and Jean Enriquez, the executive director of CATW-AP. “Our campaigns are not only about sexual violence of all kinds, but also about economy, globalization, militarism, and other political policies. We make a very clear connection with the idea of commodification of life and the commodification of women’s bodies,” says Jean about the CATW-AP work.
“When I heal, I can help other survivors. We train ourselves to become leaders. For us, being a leader is not like being a politician. For us, it is to act as models to encourage others. We are the leaders who guide and we are role models to show that positive change can happen in our lives,” Myles explains. She argues that one of the most important things when it comes to working with victim-survivors is to listen to them and to their stories. By listening to these women and understanding their reality, the leaders can discuss with them how they can become autonomous and overcome prostitution and other types of violence to which they were submitted.
The methodology of working with victim-survivors is also what guides their action around their political demands. It is from these stories and experiences that they can accumulate and build knowledge and vision about the traps that lead women to prostitution. From Myles’s perspective, which resonates into the stories of many other victim-survivors around the world, being sexually abused as a child by her own father, seeing her mother who was forced into marriage after also having been raped by him, and many other situations have induced her life to this path.
Myles explains that she “never wanted to be in prostitution.” “No one of us would want to be used by many men we don’t know. I was brought to the brothel by a soldier when I was taking care of my own siblings. My sisters in my organization were also abused by their employers when they worked as domestic workers. None dreamt to be in prostitution but many things happened to us before we got to this place.” In their perspectives, prostitution is not just something to be dealt with, it is one of the types of violence against women in the framework of their struggles.
Listening to victim-survivors is also about building the organization’s political agenda. When it comes to the terms used to name prostitution nowadays, the organization is emphatic: there is no such thing as “sex work” or “sex workers.” These names are becoming hegemonic in some places, but they did not originate from their experience or their vocabulary, Jean explains, considering their experiences in the Philippines. “We usually hear these terms from funders or from academics. Historically, feminist movements have been talking about violence against women as a form of women’s rights violations, but it is important to understand that in cases of violence against women, there are the perpetrators and there are the victims, and that is why the term ‘victim’ is very valid.”
The word “survivor” was included because these women don’t remain as victims. When they fight or find strategies to survive, they become survivors. That’s when they start recovering some autonomy when it comes to their lives. “We take care of the empowerment process of healing and recovering. Recovering their lives, recovering their dreams and aspirations. Most of them proceed to formal education, some of them become teachers. Some of them aspire to become social workers. But almost all of them become activists who are now part of something that is not only changing their own lives, but also changing society,” says Jean.
The survivors who work in the community programme and with CATW-AP are completely against the legalization of prostitution. Myles says that “to us, pro-legalization groups want women to be abused, raped”. Many of those who are speaking about legalization are coming from the academe, wishing for post-structural, postmodern ideas, and talking about prostitution as if it was a matter of sexual identity.” Jean explains that this narrative “often comes from a very patriarchal idea. In the same manner as we have been very critical of men who are trivializing women’s experience of sexual violence. They are attempting to define prostitution for the women who live it.” This perspective is reinforced by the glamorization of prostitution, led by neoliberalism.
Besides academics, funders outside the Philippines are also dictating the discourse and many NGOs are only remaining alive because of funding from agencies whose perspectives are coming from liberal ideas. This is a process marked by North-South inequalities and colonialism that pushes the ideology that women are free to choose to be prostitutes, without acknowledging that the life of these women could not be more difficult. Having to be with men when they don’t want to, having no means to take care of their families.
Understanding these women’s lives, stories, experiences and needs is one of the ways to articulate a path out of prostitution. It is important to address the roots of the problem of all forms of violence suffered by women, which are patriarchal and also, in the case of prostitution, capitalist, as in the neoliberal idea and practice that all things can become commodities, including human beings. Women want real jobs, not prostitution, and the labor movement in the Philippines understood that.
“We are happy with how we earn our money now with our feminist, fair-trade, and ecological livelihood program. We were the ones judged before. Previously, when we saw lawyers and the police, we were embarrassed. Now, we talk before them. We talk about our rights. We should be the ones being asked what is the real situation in prostitution. I come out on television [and say] that I never dreamt to be in prostitution, I dreamt to have a good life,” Myles told us. Fighting for their autonomy, victim-survivors agree that prostitution is not a real job, and they got together to push an anti-prostitution law that doesn’t see them as the criminals, like it is today, but as the victim-suvivors for whom support programs should be formulated. The real criminals are the hustlers and the buyers. “We want to have communities that are free, such as this that we organize with the help of CATW-AP.”
The movement demands an anti-prostitution law that strengthens the penalties against the buyers. As Jean says, “our analysis is that the main perpetrators of violence against women are those who are using women’s bodies.” The law today punishes the traffickers and hustlers, but accountability against the buyers are not implemented, which is a perspective that avoids the issue of patriarchy, according to Jean. Capitalism relates only to profiting on the system of prostitution, but the idea that the consent of women can be bought and that men have the right to purchase women’s bodies is a patriarchal relationship. That is why the survivors in Philippines want to get the anti-prostitution law passed, which clarifies this as a public policy.
Another huge problem faced by victim-survivors is the drug issue. “I was forced to use drugs because it numbs us. It makes us numb to what customers want to do to us,” says Myles. Women are led to use drugs by drug dealers, which make them constantly in debt with the traffickers and the hustlers, and make them even bigger victims of this system that profits from their lives.
The use of illegal drugs in the Philippines is lower than the global average . Even so, the right-wing authoritarian, conservative, and populist president Rodrigo Duterte, who assumed office in 2016, has been carrying out a war on drugs with the help of the National Police that has led to the deaths of five to 20 thousand Filipinos , mostly urban poor (the numbers vary based on different sources of information coming from the government or civil society groups). These killings increased more than 50% in the early months of the pandemic.
Increasingly, women in prostitution are used as couriers by the police to take drugs to buyers. They are forced to use drugs, and therefore a lot of them are arrested and jailed, some even charged not only with drug use, but also with selling. Besides that, Myles told Capire that since Duterte came into power, many of the victim-survivors have been raped by the police in exchange for the life and freedom of their partners who have been charged, even with no proof, by this war on drugs. “Women in prostitution are particularly targeted. Bulacan, where Myles lives now, is in fact a relocation area for poor urban women and it has one of the highest rates of killings since 2016. At least 210 women who are members of CATW-AP had relatives killed by the police,” Jean says.
About women and Duterte, Myles told us that “some of our members were pro-Duterte, but after he became president, their relatives were killed and they realized how bad he is. He attacks those who are critical of him, he trivializes rape. It is very painful for us survivors of rape, all of Duterte’s talk normalizing rape, flaunting his molestation of their domestic worker, all his sexual remarks against women.” To her and to all of the women organized with CATW-AP, if there were no feminist groups, they wouldn’t know where they would be. “We are thankful because of them. Because of these women and their experiences, we know how to resist and fight.”
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Home Issues 29 Articles From Oripun to the Yapayuki-San: ...
From Oripun to the Yapayuki-San : An Historical Outline of Prostitution in the Philippines
The study of prostitution in the Philippines, through the long period of time, shows some cycles of development of this phenomenon based on the integration of the archipelago to international colonial capitalism, the militarization of the territory through garrisons and huge American military bases and finally on aggressive public policies for the touristic development and the promotion of work abroad since the Marcos years until the present administration. Facing this sector, the legislation has fluctuated but could not reduce this activity. The explosion of AIDS epidemics in the last four years could launch a new national debate on prostitution.
L’étude de la prostitution aux Philippines, à travers les temps longs, montre des cycles de développement de ce phénomène liés à l’intégration de l’archipel au capitalisme colonial international, la militarisation du territoire à partir des garnisons et les énormes bases militaires américaines et enfin les politiques publiques agressives dans les domaines du développement touristique et du travail à l’étranger depuis la période Marcos jusqu’à maintenant. Face à ce secteur, les législations ont fluctué mais n’ont pas réduit la prostitution. L’explosion de l’épidémie de Sida depuis quatre ans pourrait bien relancer un débat national sur la prostitution.
Index terms
Mots-clés : , keywords: , introduction.
1 The Philippines, archipelago of 104 million of inhabitants, are, after 350 years of Spanish colonization and 50 years of American colonization, the unique stronghold of catholicism in Asia. The society, deeply rooted on a patriarchal tradition, condemns the sexual relationships before marriage, disapproves the nocturnal outings of the young girls without a chaperon and above all considers the prostitution as a moral aberration, real national shame. But, like the neighboring countries, the prostitution in the Philippines became, in few decades, a real industry contributing directly or indirectly, but secretly, to the growth of the national economy. It is estimated, that 300,000 to 500,000 young women practice “the oldest job of the world” in the Philippines and 50,000 to 70,000 others had moved to Japan every year to practice it. The “entertainment” sector (often an euphemism for prostitution) is thus becoming a real actor of the national economy and organized itself in powerful lobbies comprising the tourism actors, manpower agencies domestics or international, etc.
2 How the Philippines reached this paradoxical situation? What are the factors, classical but also original, having helped the growth of that sector? This article is only a first historical outline of prostitution in the Philippines, showing, through the use of the long period of time ( temps long ), some cycles of development of this economic sector at the national and international levels.
Datu and Oripun : A Pre-Spanish Prostitution?
3 The prostitution, in its modern concept of a paid sexual service, combined with an unequal power play between genders, seems non-existent in the Philippines before the arrival of the Spanish. According to Filipino historians, the women enjoyed an equal treatment with the men, were allowed to inherit, manage farms, choose their husbands, divorce, be free sexually and occupy the prestigious functions of Babaylan (spiritual leader and healer) (Ofreneo 1998: 100). This perception of history, diffused by the nationalists leaders of the middle 19 th century, among them Jose Rizal, then resumed by the present day historians and numerous feminists organizations, refers to a Golden Age where the relationships between persons were harmonious, harmony broken by the introduction of the patriarchal system, the cult of the female virginity and other systems of social control organized by the Spanish administration and its religious auxiliaries. In this context, the prostitution is perceived as an imported product from a foreign land, one of the results of the Spanish colonization, and so without indigenous roots.
4 However, as William H. Scott has shown, the main coastal communities or barangay (like Tondo in Manila, or those in the regions of Bicol, or Pangasinan in Luzon, Mindoro, Cebu, etc.) presented a marked social stratification. At the top of the social scale, was the datu whom authority was dependent from his lineage but whom political power was based on his skills to control the commercial flows, the number of slaves, concubines, subjects and his reputation of warrior. The free men ( timawa ) were the second class composed of children and descendants of the concubines of the datu and of freed slaves. The timawa had to pay a tribute to the datu and constituted the warrior class of the community, receiving a part of the loot and prisoners according to his good will. At the bottom of the society were the oripun composing the main part of the population. Legally, they could be sold and bought by their masters and were thus considered as slaves. Technically, however, their status were diversified: slaves by debt serving their masters in proportion to their debts, slave domestics, slaves captured during the annual raids, criminals and even slaves of slaves (Scott 1994: 127-146).
5 The role of the datu , as a “supplier” of women, appears discretely in some details given by the first conquistadores, details censored in the 19 th century but appearing again in the first half of the 20 th century. When Magellan sealed a blood compact in 1521 with the datu (Rajah) Humabon of Cebu, Pigafetta, chronicler of the expedition, praised the hospitality of the women surrounding the datu of Cebu. This hospitality did not consist only in their skills as musicians but extended also to the pleasure of the flesh. This question seemed to have worried Magellan, warning datu Humabon that the Europeans could not have relationships with the indigenous women without committing a mortal sin. However, according to Pigafetta, the main argument of Magellan seemed to have been only that the local women were pagans and thus could not mix with the Catholic crew, forgetting conveniently the whole tradition of the medieval christian theology (Blair & Robertson 1914b: 144). After the baptism of the women of Cebu, it seemed that all the doubts disappeared and Pigafetta wrote: “[…] the women loved us much more than their own men” (ibid.: 173). Few decades later, on April 27 1565, Miguel Lopez de Legaspi arrived in Cebu starting the process of colonization of the islands. After having sealed a peace pact with several local chiefs, Legaspi built a fort and forbade the locals to come inside after the night fell. According to an anonymous Spanish officer, this curfew was necessary because “the local women prostituted themselves freely in the camp, an evil that Legaspi, despite having posted sentries, was unable to eliminate” (Blair & Robertson, 1914a: 138). Legaspi met the local datu on this question, the latter retorted that it was custom of hospitality towards all the strangers: “The first thing that they [ datu ] do is to send them women. [...] Even the wives and daughters of the chiefs are involved in a sexual activity without restrictions” (ibid.: 138). The sexuality as a modality of hospitality, perceived as prostitution by the newcomers, seemed however having been under the control of the datu . We don’t know if these wives and daughters of the chiefs were legitimate or concubines and of what level. Nevertheless, this “sharing” could not exist in the community without a kind of rights to adultery.
Virtuous Women and “Women of Low Life”
6 During most of the Spanish colonization, the question of prostitution in the Philippines seemed secondary for the Spanish civilian authorities. Only the religious authorities denounced regularly this practice, attracting the attention of the authorities of Madrid, Manila and their parishioners, on the immorality of the behavior. But, it is in the context of deep socio-economic changes in the 19 th century, that a flourishing sector of prostitution developed in the Philippines as evidenced by the great varieties of qualifiers for a prostitute: dama de noche (woman of the night), mujeres libres (free woman), mujer pública (public woman), mujerzuela (woman of low value), puta or prostituta (prostitute), vagamunda (vagrant), indocumentada (not having paid the personal tax or cédula ) (Dery 2001: 133).
7 The Spanish archives, located in Manila on this question, spaced out from 1849 to 1897, far from being complete, allow nevertheless to make a link between poverty and prostitution. Thus, on the one hundred young women arrested by the Guardia Civil Veterana of Manila and for whom the information exist, an average profile was established by Ken De Bevoise (De Bevoise 2002). These women are young (more than 50% are less than 20 years old, the youngest was 13), illiterate, bachelors and migrating from 21 provinces of Luzon. On the other hand, the dysfunction of the family appears clearly when a majority notified that they lost one of their parents or were orphans. For those who stated the work of their parents, more than 50% of their fathers were farm laborers or day-laborer and more than 60% of their mothers were dressmakers or workers in the cigar industry. Finally, when these young women stated their own legitimate activity, 85% said they were dressmakers, workers in the cigar industry, domestic helpers and laundry women (ibid.: 74-76).
8 When arrested by the guardia civil , these women had to pay a fine and spend few days to few weeks in jail, these punishments varying according to the status of the persons, first timers or multi recidivists. Up to the middle of the years 1870, the strongest punishment was the exile to the newly colonized areas of Mindanao (Davao), Sulu (Jolo), Palawan and Balabac island in order to isolate the “evil” from the mainstream society, to reform them and make them useful for the society in working in the agricultural colonies. This exile, feared by the young persons and their families, could last 1 to 2 years. In practice, this exile could be shortened on request of the prostitute to the general governor and after having shown the evidences of their reformation. Camagay specified that a request for marriage was generally enough for the comeback to the “civilization” but in some cases these requests were probably fixed for the circumstances (Camagay 1995: 102-104). However, this request for marriage could be used also in the other way as shown in the correspondence between the governor of Jolo and the governor general: the former asked the latter if he had a “stock” of 100 prostitutes to be sent to Jolo in order to marry them to the 100 soldiers of the Legazpi regiment based permanently on this island. The governor general approved the request... (Dery 2001: 148).
9 From the years 1875-1880, the punishment of exile became less threatening, the moral aspects giving precedence to the medical question. The pessimistic reports of the Spanish doctors on the growth of venereal diseases in the Philippines forced the civil authorities to rethink the system. The arrested prostitutes, were not anymore deported but subjected to a medical examination (treated in the hospital of San Juan de Dios if needed) and then released after a short period in jail or sent back to their native provinces, most of them coming back to Manila as soon as possible. The next step was crossed when in the years 1880, the idea to regulate the sector of prostitution in Manila (not elsewhere) was seriously studied despite the resistance of the archbishop of Manila and some powerful sector of the population. This new policy was implemented in 1888. According to this law, the brothels ( casas de prostitucion ), the prostitutes and their bosses ( ama for a female boss and amo for their male counterpart) should be registered and the young women were subjected to two medical examination each week by the health inspectors. The infected women were to be immediately hospitalized and the medical inspectors had the power to revoke the licenses of the casas for violation of the rules. By this system, it was recognized that in 1893, 1,693 prostitutes were living in Manila. But these statistics, of course, did not integrate the women working independently (in the streets, places, parks of Manila or at home or the home of their clients).
10 The prostitution sector could not have developed so easily without the complicity of some public officials. During the period before the regulation, the members of the guardia civil could ignore the activities of an amo in exchange for a “gift”. The police forces were not, of course, alone as accomplices. In 1887, for example, the governor general himself, scandalized by the growth of the prostitution in Manila, ordered a strong campaign in order to eradicate this activity (prelude to the raids of the 20 th century). The results of the raids were disappointing, few prostitutes arrested and few casas closed. The reason for this failure was simple: the Spanish governor of Manila was himself the main protector of the casas, neutralizing the operations of his own boss (Dery 2001: 135).
Prostitution: “A Military Necessity”?
11 At the turn of the 19 th century, the Philippines enter one of the darkest period of their history. In 1896, started the first revolution, then the second in 1898 in parallel to the Spanish-American war, the Filipino-American war in 1899 followed by the period of “pacification”. Of the thousands of Spanish soldiers defending the islands were added 120,000 American soldiers from August 1898 to 1902. An important part of the American troops (10,000 in 1900 for example on a total of 70,000) were located in the suburbs of Manila and more specifically in the district of Sampaloc, which, according to the witnesses, became, practically in a night, a huge open brothel where drunken soldiers and half naked women made the good Spanish families flee their home (De Bevoise 2002: 86).
12 The explosion in the demand of sexual services for the rest and recreation of the troops was followed not only by a more intensive local recruitment but also by flows of foreign prostitutes attracted by the new opportunities. Russian, Austrian, American and other European, already prostitutes in Asia, settled in Manila. Numerically, however, these groups would be quickly overtaken by the Japanese prostitutes. According to Motoe Terami-wada, in 1902, the prostitution was one of the most prosperous activity of the Japanese community, with 35 casas managed by the Japanese of which 32 were in the Sampaloc district alone. These women generally came from the port of Nagasaki and entered the Philippines clandestinely or after having bought a fake passport in Hong Kong. The Japanese prostitutes were found all over the Philippines contrary to their western colleagues concentrated in Manila (Terami-Wada 1984: 4-6).
13 The system of Spanish inspections was reorganized in Manila by the American authorities at the end of 1898. The medical examinations cost to the foreign prostitutes was between $1 and $2 and for the local between 50 cents and $1, the cost varying according to the place of examination, in the hospital or in the casa (De Bevoise 2002: 87). Then, in June 1899, the American military government took the control of this question in Manila, making the civil authorities (Philippine Commission) powerless. General Mac Arthur explained that it was a “military necessity” and that this sector was not legalized but regulated. Each known prostitute was registered, photographed, then treated if necessary (542 prostitutes were thus registred in Manila in 1900 of whom 80% were treated in the hospital). In 1901, General George Davis gathered the known prostitutes and classified them according to their potential customers (1 st class for officers, etc.), forbidding the movement from one class to another and concentrated them to the district of Sampaloc in Gardenia street, creating then the first red-light district of Manila, in order to control the spread of venereal diseases (Dery 2001: 141-144). This system of inspection, classification and concentration was applied only for the capital and of course only for the known women. Since February 1899, the American troops were spread all over the Filipino territory following the start of the war with the revolutionaries and the numerous operations of “pacification”. In 1900, 600 garrisons were established in the archipelago, diffusing the prostitution in the provinces and its consequence, the syphilis.
14 Despite these attempts of regulation or covert legalization with the view to preserve the operational capacity of the American army, the failure is clear. If we believe the report of H.W McFadden to the governor Taft in February 1902, based on military and medical documents: 20 to 40% of the American soldiers in the Philippines were sick and inapt for the service, being victims of venereal diseases. Even during their treatment, in the thermal waters of Los Baños, the American soldiers did not cease their activities, as deplored by Doctor Street who remarked that the women of Los Baños are more and more numerous to contract these diseases (Dery 2001: 141). Since 1902, the United States demobilized a part of their troops following the end of the operations of “pacification”, but between that year and 1918 an average of 17,000 men and officers (garrisons and seamen included) were on the Philippines soil every year. The first systematic campaign against the venereal diseases started only in March 1919 which led to the creation of two specialized clinics in the hospital of San Lazaro and the Philippines General Hospital.
15 This campaign of 1919 followed the movement started by the Governor General Harrisson on order of President Wilson, abolishing the red-light district of Gardenia in 1917. The abolitionist movement was victorious the following year when the commanding officer of the U.S Army forbade all military and civil staff to enter or live in a house of ill reputation. Rafael Palma, the Secretary of Interior, followed the movement and ordered the closure of all dancing, bars, etc. (ibid.: 145). The direct consequence of this new policy was the expulsion, in 1918, of 122 Japanese, the exile of 120 Filipinas to Davao and the deportation of several dozens of westerners. Since that year, if we except a tentative by President Marcos to legalize or regulate this activity in 1980, the sector of prostitution in the Philippines entered legally in the “underground”. But, as Senator Manuel Quezon (future President of the Philippines Commonwealth) was explaining to Governor Harrisson in 1918, the closure of the district of Gardenia will allow the propagation of prostitution and the venereal diseases from Manila to the other provinces of the archipelago...
16 Echoing the fears of Senator Quezon, the report of the League of Nations (LN) of 1933, on prostitution in Asia, showed that if the Manila authorities had a relative success in controlling the “evil” in Manila (only 300-500 clandestine prostitutes in Manila according to the chief of police), the situation in the provinces was probably not as rejoicing. In effect, the implementation of the fight against prostitution being the primary responsibility of the municipalities according to the administrative code of 1917 section 2242, the success could vary from one place to another, depending essentially of the good will of the local authorities (LN 1933: 189). Some provinces, close to Manila, were the beneficiaries of the transfer of these activities, under various covers (dancing halls, bars, etc.) improving noticeably the local government income.
17 The committee remarked also that the ban on prostitution in the archipelago, reinforced by strict immigration laws, especially for the Chinese females, reduced drastically the international trafficking of women and children bound for the Philippines. The boat captains carrying immigrants for the Philippines had to cooperate with the immigration authorities, preparing a list of the passengers and allowing the landing of the latter only after examination of the immigration officers. Moreover, the captains were duty bound to repatriate the immigrants, who were barred to enter the Philippines, to the original port. The chief of the Immigration Department specified that all the women and girls, especially Chinese, coming to the Philippines, were systematically interviewed by the Board of Special Inquiry in order to statute on their cases. Some contradictions in their testimonies, or doubts about their age or the authenticity of their administrative documents, lead to their expulsion. Article 4 of the law on immigration stipulated 10 years of jail and a fine of $5000 to any person bringing in the Philippines a foreigner for prostitution or any other immoral actions (LN 1933: 197). Thus, between 1927 and 1932, 900 Chinese females were deported from the Philippines. This number doesn’t tell, however, the percentage of prostitutes among those “undesirable” aliens. According to some immigration officers, some Chinese businessmen attempted to bring some young women in order to employ them as maids or to marry them in violation of the law.
18 Nevertheless, these laws, as strict as they may be, could apply, at best, in the official ports of entrance, like Manila or Cebu. But, the committee noticed an important clandestine immigration of Chinese between North Borneo (actual Sabah) and the Philippines through the archipelago of Sulu. In what measure these traffics were concerning women and children used for the prostitution, the Insular authorities could not say (ibid.: 200). Moreover, as deplored, in 1931, by Colonel Bowers, intelligence chief of the Philippine Constabulary, in practice, the geography of the archipelago and the insignificant means of the insular government were important factors favoring the clandestine traffics of products and Chinese: the coast guards and the customs had only one boat each to patrol the waters of the whole archipelago (Bowers 1931: 8). Moreover, these two boats were too slow and the staff was concentrated in Manila. On the other hand, Bowers was deploring the lack of coordination and cooperation between the concerned agencies in the Philippines and the consular representatives in the ports of origin of these traffic, specially Amoy (China) (ibid.). In short, the internal documents of the insular government, not communicated to the League of Nations, showed the Philippines as an open sea and probably vulnerable to international trafficking of women and children, of Chinese origin principally.
The American Bases and the Explosion of Prostitution
19 As a passing remark, the League of Nation’s committee noticed that seemingly the total ban of prostitution in the Philippines suffered at least one exception. In 1929, in effect, the representatives of a civic organization denounced the presence, of all official casas in the barrio (village) of Lourdes (municipality of Angeles, Pampanga province) close to a military camp. These houses were supervised jointly by the civil authorities of Angeles and the medical doctors of the U.S Army. The scandal, exposing the general hypocrisy, was so strong in the Philippines and in the United States, that in 1930, the embarrassed American military authorities, stopped the medical examination of the young women. These facts were never publicly dismissed. The prostitution, a military necessity? After the war, the cities of Angeles and Olongapo, welcome the two biggest American military bases of Asia, Air Force base of Clark and Naval base of Subic Bay respectively. There were surnamed by the population, as Sodom and Gomorrah...
20 From 1948 to 1950, Clark Airbase, following the new American strategy, was enlarged from 3,000 hectares to 64,053 hectares (nearly the area of Singapore), becoming the largest American military installation in the Far East. The demographic impact on the city of Angeles (became a City in 1963) was phenomenal. Between 1948 and 1990 (year of closure of the bases), the population of Angeles was multiplied by 6,3 (37,558 inhabitants in 1948 and 236,686 in 1990) when during the same period the population of Pampanga province was increased 3,4 times (National Statistics Office 1948 to 1990). In 1990, before the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, Angeles was the most populous city in Luzon after Metro Manila. However, this population growth was spatially circumscribed to 5 barangays located to the north of Angeles City poblacion (city center proper) closed to the base. Barangay Balibago, having the main entrance of the base, saw its population multiplying by 20 during this period. The adjacent barangays of Anunas, Malabanas, Pandan and Santa Teresita had similar growth. These five barangays form the red light district of Angeles City and concentrate, in the census of year 2010, more than 30% of the city’s population (Angeles is composed of 32 barangays).
21 In 1990, a study made by the NGOs WEDPRO and Kalayaan, estimated that between Angeles City and Olongapo City, 50,000 to 55,000 women were working as prostitutes (Miralao 1990: 1). This estimate was based first on the number of officially registered entertainers in the social hygiene clinics and second on the generally accepted hypothesis that the call girls and streetwalkers are at least double the official number. Officially, 17,242 women were registered as “entertainers” of whom 5,642 were in Angeles City and 11,600 in Olongapo City, employed by 2,182 establishments (1,567 in Angeles and 615 in Olongapo). Moreover, the demand was potentially huge knowing that 25550 soldiers and their dependants were living in Clark and 5,000 soldiers, 560 civilians and their 5500 dependants, plus 800 U.S Marines were in Subic. To the latter must be added the 70000 seamen and officers of the U.S Fleet landing regularly in Subic for reparations, rest, etc., and of course the 50,000 Filipino civilians employed on the two bases.
22 According to this WEDPRO’s study, on 300 prostitutes interviewed (150 in Olongapo and 150 in Angeles), the totality of employees of casas (officially employed as waitresses in small eateries) and 95% of the employees of bars and clubs were in the two cities less than five years. This migration phenomenon was less visible for the call-girls and streetwalkers whom 42% were born in the provinces of Pampanga and Zambales (ibid.: 7 and 30). The provinces of origin (around 50%) were among the poorest of the Philippines: Samar, Leyte and the Bicol region (Albay, Sorsogon and Camarines) located on the Pacific side and swept from June to October by devastating typhoons and are the locus of important conflicts between the NPA (New People’s Army, military arm of the communist party) and the Philippine army. This migration towards these two cities was not made blindly, 66% of these women knew somebody there, a friend, a relative, colleagues and accompanied by them during their journeys. Only 17% were actively recruited by a procurer or a mamasan (floor manager of a nightclub).
23 With the exception of freelance prostitutes, the study showed that in 1990, the women of these two cities had an income, in average, above those of domestic helpers but below the official legal minimum in the Philippines (2000 pesos monthly in 1990). Only 10% of the hostesses of casas and 16% of the bars had an income above 2000 pesos a month. Moreover, these incomes were extremely irregular, depending on the number of clients. The hostesses received a fixed commission on drinks bought by the client for himself and for the hostess (ladies’s drink) and, according to the bars, 35 to 50% of the bar fine paid by the client to the owner of the bar allowing him to take out the prostitute from her workplace, without forgetting the tip given by the client to his sexual partner. Other clients, the patronizing ones, preferred the cheaper formula of “renting” a prostitute at home, for a minimum of two weeks after negotiations with the bar owner. The prostitute was, then, used also as a maid, cook, etc., dreaming that one day the client would become the boy-friend or even the husband. In most of the cases, however, the relationships stopped at the end of the contract but could result in a more substantial tip (Miralao 1990: 38).
24 According to a survey made by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and five NGOs and Foundations, around 12,000 children Amerasians were born in Olongapo and Angeles between 1969 and 1993 (DSWD 1995: 8). The survey, on 2,287 persons of less than 24 years old, showed that only 6% of the births were legitimate. The fathers, a majority of white American soldiers (66%) had practically abandoned their offspring since less than 2% continued to finance the education of their children and 74% of the latter did not know the address of their biological fathers. These children were under the care of their mothers and their families and to a certain extent helped by Filipino-American NGOs for scholarships. But, the cycle of poverty continued. Due to a lack of resources and early marital relationships, 30% of these children were very early out of school and only 9% were studying in college. The jobs of these young persons were closely related to those of their mother: waitresses, domestic helpers, dancers, sales ladies and non-qualified factory workers for the females, and carpenters, electrician or low skilled office clerks for the males with only 35% of stable jobs (ibid.: 23). Despite these difficulties, and contrary to media reports, these young people thought that they were well integrated in the society and didn’t feel much of discrimination even those with a black American father (only 2,7% of the latter ). Despite being abandoned by their fathers, the attraction for the United States was still very strong for these teenagers, since a majority of them dreamed to become American citizens. Twenty percent of the students even hoped to be integrated one day in the U.S Navy or the U.S Air Force...
The Explosion of Sexual Tourism
25 During the years 1970s-1980s, the Marcos government launched an aggressive campaign to promote the Philippines as a touristic destination, successful enough to go beyond the million of visitors in 1980 (16,6431 only in 1972) and bringing more than 300 millions of dollars. In 1979, 26% of the tourists coming to Philippines were Japanese, of whom 95% were males, traveling in groups via Japan Air Lines, residing in Japanese hotels and using a Japanese Tour Operator. However, most of their activities in the Philippines (in Thailand, Korea and Taiwan also) were to visit the numerous clubs, massage parlors, bars which proliferated in Manila, particularly in the districts of Ermita and Malate. The Japanese mafia, the Yakuza (or boryokudan ), played a key role in the organization of this kind of tourism, facilitating the contacts with local operators and financing also the clubs which offered these sexual services (De Dios 1992: 43).
26 In 1979, Ryoschi Sasakawa, a powerful businessman with close connections with the godfathers of the Yakuza and an intimate friend of President Marcos, established the World Safari Club, a tour operator exclusively for Japanese with exclusive rights to develop Lubang island (off Mindoro island) in a paradise for Japanese tourists: hunting, fishing and women in an environment of tropical vegetation were the main arguments for promotion. Denounced as a project of open prostitution by Filipino and Japanese feminist organizations and by the Catholic Church, the project was cancelled. At the same time, a protest campaign was launched in Korea, Thailand, Philippines and Japan against the practice of sexual tourism, including petitions to the Prime Minister Suzuki in 1981, putting enough pressure on the Japanese government to reduce this practice (ibid.: 43).
27 But, as noted by the Philippine Plan for Gender Responsive Development 1995-2025, sexual tourism is still well alive, linked to complex financial interests of the actors of tourism. The American company Philippines Adventure Tours, for example, located in California, promised to the clients to “never sleep alone during their tours and to have a different girl every night, even two if they were able”. The client paid $1,645 including the airplane ticket, hotels and guided visits in the bars. This company closed in 1999 but it could have, according to the NBI (Filipino FBI), at least 25 other companies giving these kind of services and based essentially in the United States, Australia, Japan and Germany (Marcelino 2004: 50). Other companies, like Big Apple Oriental Tour (also in Thailand), are specialized in the negotiation of prices with the owners of the bars and clubs, the client taking charge of his airplane ticket and hotel. Following the strong raids of the police, during the 1990s, in the districts of Ermita and Malate, under the control of the Manila Mayor, Alfredo Lim (former director of the NBI), the establishments were transferred to “less hostile” places: Pasay City, Cebu City (direct flights with Tokyo) and Davao City (historical links with Japan since before the Second World War) became the three main centers of attraction for the sexual tourism and the recruitment of the yapayuki-san .
The Explosion of the Yapayuki-San Phenomenon
28 The Filipinos have a long tradition in music, dance and folk songs, which were well-recognized by their neighbors. The nightclubs of Shanghai and Tokyo, for instance, employed the best Filipino professional singers, attracting the clients by their skills during the 1950s-1970s. Nowadays, however, the word “entertainers” has taken a strong negative meaning, in Japan or in the Philippines, synonymous of yapayuki-san , term derived of “Karayuki-san” which designated the Japanese prostitutes serving the Japanese soldiers in China before and during the Second World War. Following the campaigns against the sexual tourism at the beginning of the 1980s, the Japanese government was forced to reduce this practice, forcing the tour operators to be more discrete. Simultaneously, however, this same government opened a new category of visa in 1981, the visa for entertainers (De Dios 1992: 43). In 1982, 9,125 Filipinas went to Japan using this visa, but this number reached 70,000 in 2001. In 2004, of 130,000 foreigners who came in Japan with this visa, 60% were from the Philippines. In total, it was estimated that 180,000 Filipino entertainers and residents in Japan remitted more than 200 millions of dollars in the Philippines yearly.
29 The inquiry of the Filipino Senate, after the mysterious death of a dancer in Japan in September 1991, showed that 90% of the Filipino entertainers were in fact used as hostesses and attracted the clients towards the clubs ( dohan practice). Facing the intense competition between the clubs, the hostesses had to satisfy the clients even if it meant to bear in silence the abuses of the drunken clients: verbal and physical abuses, long hours of work (no resting days), rapes and the necessity to go out with the clients were among the most common complains of the Filippines “ yapayuki ” (Senate Committee report 1991: 12).
30 Following the scandal of September 1991 and on the recommendations of the Senate, the rules for the deployment of the artists had been reinforced. The introduction of the Philippines and Japan on the watchlist of the United States Department of State in June 2004 (list of countries which did not act enough to eliminate the traffics of persons) seemed to have produced a certain electroshock. In a period of three years, as the two states were negotiating a general agreement, the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement or JPEPA signed on September 9 2006, the Japanese government reduced the number of visas of the Overseas Performing Artists (OPA), from 50,000 in 2004 to 10,000 in 2007 (Piquero-Ballescas 2009: 86 )
The Prostitution of Children
31 One of the main targets of sexual tourism are the children, defined by the United Nations as being less than 18 years old, or by the law 7610 voted in 1992 by the Congress of the Philippines, as being more than 18 years old but having a mental or physical handicap making them particularly vulnerable. According to this definition, the NGO ECPAT (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes) estimated that there were 20,000 children prostitutes in 1986 and between 60,000-100,000 in 1997 in the Philippines (DSWD-UNICEF 1998: 31). This latter estimate has been accepted by DSWD, UNICEF and numerous NGOs. However, none of these organizations explained their criteria in order to arrive at these results, making a group of researchers wondering that probably some NGOs over-estimated these results in order to attract more subventions (DSWD 1998: 4). The number of children used for sexual services is generally derived from the data of the centers and institutions in charge of street children. These street children were estimated to reach 1,5 million at the national level. This statistic, however, must be used with great caution since these children are extremely mobile, visiting several centers at the same time and are then counted several times in the statistics. The researches on general prostitution in the touristic cities of Cebu and Davao showed that 20-25% of the prostitutes were between 15 to 17 years old (DSWD-UNICEF 1998: 32). The data of DSWD, comprising only the number of cases which were reported for action (by the families, police etc.), showed an increase of the number of cases reported of sexually exploited children, from 102 in 1991 to 453 cases in 1999. For the year 2000, on 280 actions taken by the DSWD for sexually exploited children, 66% concerned young girls in prostitution, 16% victims of traffickers, 14% victims of pedophiles (33 girls and 7 boys) and 3% victims of the pornographic industry (DSWD 2003).
32 However, if geographically, the victims helped by the DSWD came principally from the most touristic and economically active cities of the Philippines like Manila, Angeles, Cebu or Davao, other smaller centers are “specialized” in pedophilia. The most notorious town was Pagsanjan (Laguna province), south of Manila. The pedophiles’ activities were denounced in 1981 in a French documentary called “les trottoirs de Manille” shown on the TV channel TF1 and and seen by 12 millions of Europeans. Following this expose, several children prostitutes were arrested not only in Pagsanjan but also in Manila and five foreigners were deported for having used the services of children aged 9 to 16 years. In 1988, new raids were launched by the Bureau of Immigration and the NBI resulting in the arrest of 22 foreigners. The confiscation of documents from the American A. Harvey by the NBI unearthed the complexity of fighting child prostitution and pedophilia. Harvey was a go-between with the clients and had a file on 590 children of Pagsanjan aged 7 to 17 years old (practically all the children of the town) complete with the pornographic pictures. His clients were Filipino and foreign businessmen linked to international companies, politicians, government officials, Western and Asian diplomats and foreign tourists (Marcelino 2004: 41). This massive prostitution could not have developed without the complicity of the parents and local officials. In fact, Pagsanjan was described as an economically prosperous center, the parents receiving enough money to send their children to school, renovate their houses, buy a jeepney, a shop, etc. In 1988, even some parents ventilated their indignation on the arrest of the foreigners, the latter being so generous... Since then, the village of Sabang near Puerto Galera (Mindoro Oriental) seemed to take the place of Pagsanjan but more discretely. Other modus operandi of the pedophiles had been documented by the NBI and NGOs: adoption and sponsor of children, organization of NGOs, Institutes and Fondations specialized in “helping the street children”, modeling agencies for children, etc.
The New Development of a Virtual Prostitution
33 If this question is still not studied in the Philippines, the different raids launched by the NBI on cybersex joints of Angeles, Davao, Cebu and Makati (business center of the Philippines) between the years 2000 and 2004, allow us to have an idea of this activity. In May 2003, an American was arrested by the NBI during a search in his luxurious house in Makati. This rented house was divided in 10 rooms. In each room there was a computer equipped with several video cameras. Twenty young girls, among them two minors, were employed by this company, working every 8 hours, the center being open 24h/24. However, these young persons were not prostitutes but waitresses in restaurants and students in the university. Moreover, the American boss was only the representative of an important provider specialized in entertainment for adults online and located in the state of Nevada. The prostitution and pornography are legal in this American State, but the costs of the “human resources” and the attraction of the clients for “exotic” females, make the Philippines an attractive country... (Marcelino 2004: 46). The development of these new technologies helped Angeles City to have a second life after the closure of Clark. Barangay Balibago is now the place of concentration of cybersex joints which owners are American, Australian, German and British nationals. The prostitutes of Angeles confirmed their attraction for these new opportunities since the clients are much fewer than before 1991 and the virtual reality allows them not to be in physical contact with the clients. Nevertheless, the clients, in the other parts of the world, being kings after having paid for a minute or 30 minutes by credit card, the young persons cannot but obey to their fantasies. Thus, the raids of the NBI in March 2004 in Balibago, allowed to discover that 11 years old children were forced to execute sexual acts between themselves online (ibid.: 67).
34 Some “attractive” remunerations (70-80 pesos per hour or more according to the experience and kind of services, the minimum pay in Manila for companies of more than 10 persons is 300 pesos a day in 2005), a simple equipment for the cybersex joint and the feeling of virtual reality were all favorable factors for the spread of this kind of prostitution towards smaller urban centers. Thus, the small town of Bislig (Surigao del Sur province, Mindanao), which was in crisis since the closure of the wood industry in the 90’s, had seen the proliferation of cybersex joints, under the cover of internet cafes (Bernardo, personal communication, Manila, January 2005). The number of candidates for this kind of activity was particularly “important” sometime before the beginning of the school year in high school or college, when it is a need to pay the tuition fees, school supplies and accumulate pocket money for the year. The work in a cybersex joint can be seen as a practical mean, temporary and discreet to earn quickly some money, helping, without the knowledge of the parents, the small family budget.
The Legislative System in the Philippines: Fighting Prostitution
35 Facing all the forms of prostitution on the national territory, the Congress voted two fundamental laws. Law 7610 or law for the special protection of the children, implemented since 1992, penalizing of heavy terms of jail not only any person procuring a child for prostitution (life term jail for the parents and public servants and recidivists), or the persons beneficing materially from this activity (owners of bar, etc.) but also, and for the first time, the clients of these children. If the victim is less than 12 years old, the client will be prosecuted for rape. This law punishes also the attempt to commit an act of prostitution if a person is alone with a child (with no kinship) in a room of a house, hotel, motel, vehicle, etc. The trafficking of a child is punished by life term in jail if the child is less than 12 years old. The second law, R.A 9208, otherwise known as law against the trafficking of persons was implemented in June 2003 after 8 years of deliberations. According to this law, the trafficking of persons is defined as an act of recruitment, transport, transfer, sheltering and reception of persons, with or without their consent, on the national territory or abroad, using all means of coercion and pressure with the objectives, among others, to exploit sexually these persons. Among the actions defining the trafficking of persons (section 4), to use the services of a prostitute, even adult, constitute, from now on, a criminal act punishable by 20 years of jail and a fine of 1 to 2 million pesos. On the other hand, the persons facilitating the traffic, specially via internet and other information technologies are punishable by 15 years in jail and a fine of 1 million pesos. Finally, when a child is trafficked, or the delinquents are the parents or a public servant, etc., the trafficking act is qualified and the punishment is life imprisonment.
36 But, if these two laws had been warmly welcomed for their harshness, some social workers had some doubts on their practicality. Since 1992, for instance, the foreign pedophiles had been voluntarily deported by the Bureau of Immigration, even before being prosecuted and serving the sentence. They could, thus, continue their activities in a neighboring country or even come back to the Philippines under another name. Moreover, if these two laws considered the prostitutes as victims, the penal code of 1965 had not been amended and continued to perceive the prostitutes as delinquents like vagrants (art. 202, with punishment of 30 days in jail). The labor code of 1974 recognized their legitimate activities (massage attendants, hostesses etc.) and were considered as employees of these establishments, but did not recognize their activities of prostitution, their real unique source of income. Finally, the main urban municipalities had imposed a mandatory medical check-up in exchange of a health card that the young women have to carry during their work, recognizing indirectly the status of prostitute. This ambiguous juridical status favored the development of practices of corruption by some law enforcers. Since the 1990s, several feminists organizations launched a campaign for the elimination of article 202 of the penal code and the de-criminalization of the prostitutes, refusing the legalization of this sector for moral reasons (exploitation and violations of the persons’rights) but reinforcing the punishments for the other actors of this industry (Ofreneo 1998: 123).
37 This strict legislation can only be implemented on the national territory. The internationalization of prostitution, however, can play in both ways: the classical or virtual prostitution can be located on the national soil for international and national clients but can also be “exported” to answer the needs of the foreign markets.
The Explosion of “Marriage Marketing”
38 The Philippines became, since the end of the 80’s, one of the main Asian sources of young women for the international marriage marketing. Hundreds of western matching agencies “sell” to their potential clients Asiatic women stereotyped as exotic, simple, submissive and traditional whose main dream is to meet, marry, and make the client the happiest man on earth (Santos 2002: 10). Facing the “Asian contest” (Thailand and Indonesia principally), the Filipinas have two other main assets, the Catholic faith and the English language, which put them closer to the westerners. At the opposite, the Philippine culture, with deep patriarchal roots, tends to see a single young woman of more than 25 years old as kawawa (pitiful). It must be added also what the sociologists have called the “colonial mentality”, inheritance of 450 years of colonization, and which perceives, with strong stereotypes also, a marriage with a foreigner as a good choice allowing a comfortable material life not only for themselves but also for their families still in the Philippines living in difficult situations (ibid.).
- 1 Interview with Joseph Escasio, director management information system office of CFO, January 5 200 (...)
39 Thus, between 1989 and 2014, 47,7834 persons (91% of women) came through the services of the Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO 2015a and 2015e), institution in charge of orienting and advising the fiancées and spouses of foreign national. The certificates of participation to the seminars of the CFO are mandatory to obtain a fiancée and spouses visa delivered by the foreign embassies. In total, 76% of the women were spouses (24% fiancées) but only 20-25% of the persons having the visa decided to migrate (for a given year). The majority stayed, then, in the Philippines, either because the foreign husband decided to reside there, or, in the majority of the cases, one of the two partners made more or less long visits in the country of the other, the decision to migrate being done on the middle or long term 1 . The foreign partners of Filipinos were American (43%), Japanese (25%), Australians (8%), and Canadians, South Koreans and Germans 4% respectively (CFO 2015h).
40 The international marriage marketing targeting the Philippines, is characterized by strong age differences. Sixty-four percent of the young women were located in the bracket 18-29 of whom 31% were between 18 and 24 years old and 93% of the spouses and fiancées were single before meeting their foreign partners. At the opposite, the latter had an average age of 38 years old and 42% of them were more than 40 years old of whom 10% were more than 55 years old (CFO 2015b). This gap between the ages was also reflected in the civil status of the men: 61% were single but 35% divorced at least one time before meeting their Filipina partner, and widows (3%) (CFO 2015d). But the second characteristic of this market is the nearly perfect balance in the level of education: 43% and 40% of the women and their partners had graduated from high school respectively and 50% of both partners went to college with whom 31% and 30% respectively graduated or even had a Master degree. The persons having no education or went only up to the primary level formed only a small part of the whole: 5,5% of the women and 2,5% of their partners (CFO 2015c).
41 If, of course, a large majority of these women would live a normal life with their foreign spouses, the private and public institutions in charge of fighting the international trafficking of women and children had warned the public on the important abuses of the marriage marketing sector. A report for the Philippine Center on Transnational Crime (PCTC 1999), institution of the Philippine National Police, recognized two main forms of abuse of the fiancé/spouse visa. The first abuse was the “serial sponsor” whereby, a young woman who wanted to work abroad, without the legal documents, must find a fictitious foreign fiancé, who was paid around 50,000-100,000 pesos for his services. When abroad, the “fiancés” left each other, the woman stayed clandestinely on the foreign soil while her sponsor went back to the Philippines and started again his activity (PCTC 1999: 10). In other cases, the fiancés were real but the relationship would last only up to the duration of the visa. An Australian survey of 1992 on 111 “serial sponsors” showed that 53 men sponsored 2 Filipinas, 57 were the sponsor of 3 women and one Australian the sponsor of 8. These sponsors believed that this system was cheaper (visa of 3 months) than to rent daily the services of an Australian prostitute. This same survey also showed that on 110 “serial sponsoring”, 80 cases experienced domestic violence (PCTC 1999: 10). A study by the Criminology Institute of Sydney in 1996 found that 70% of the Filipinas having migrated to Australia used this system of acquiring the fiancé/spouse visa and were the object of domestic violence: the Filipinas had the risk of being killed six times more than an Australian wife (ibid.: 11). Moreover, the Australian States of Victoria, New South Wales, Australian Capital Territory and Queensland had legalized prostitution since the 1980s-1990s (those of Tasmania and South Australia will probably do the same). However, far from having controlled the spread of prostitution, legalizing this industry had the opposite effect (Sullivan 2002: 4). One fully growing sector was the clandestine trafficking of young Asian women, with market valued at 30 million Australian dollars. Moreover, the Australian brothels earned around one million Australian dollars each week because of this illegal trafficking (Sullivan 2002: 13). If most of the cases made public in the Australian press seemed to concern Thai and Indonesian women, the Filipinas were not absent. In fact, on March 2005, the NBI raided a cybersex joint in Abra province (Northern Luzon) owned by two Australian of Victoria State (Cimatu 2005: 19). These Australians and their local accomplices recruited young women in this province promising a wonderful wedding with an Australian. Meantime, these girls were forced to work for a while in the cybersex joint until they enter Australia as fiancées and eventually be sexually exploited in one of the brothels of Melbourne.
42 Facing all these kinds of exploitation by the marriage marketing sector, President Cory Aquino signed in 1990 R.A 6955 which criminalized all acts of organizing meetings for a wedding between a Filipina and a foreigner. This measure targeted directly the professional brokers and other professional intermediaries of interpersonal relationships. Any person having violated this law can be punished by 6 to 8 years of jail and a fine of $350. The problem, of course, is the implementation of this law. The law did not forbid an individual to travel or to marry a foreigner, moreover, the matrimonial agencies are legal in western countries and use dummies in order to operate in the Philippines. Finally, the internet had become an important tool in the area of marriage marketing in the Philippines since the year 2000 (CFO 2015g). These websites are located in western countries where they are legal. The men suscribing to these websites pay between $35 and $135 and receive a personal access code to the data of the young women (the Filipinas do not pay anything). In short, the implementation of this law seemed doubtful in front of the quick technological evolution and informal networks of interpersonal contacts that dominate the sector. The risks of sexual exploitation and criminal trafficking are real. The young women should have the knowledge of the country of destination, the cultural practices, legislation and other pertinent information needed in making the decision to migrate. The statistics of the CFO are interesting on this aspect: 65% of the women recognized to have a very small knowledge or no knowledge at all on the country of their partners (CFO 2015f).
Is There a Male Prostitution in the Philippines?
43 Of all the forms of prostitution, the male prostitution in the Philippines is probably the most taboo. The national media are not interested in this sector and the researches by scholars and institutions are practically non-existent. There were only two dissertations in epidemiology of the University of California authored by two Filipino medical doctors and one study by the Department of Health sponsored by the WHO which formed practically the only sources of informations on male prostitution. These pioneering studies, however, were geographically concentrated in Manila and its suburb (Pasay City and Quezon City) and did not allow us to generalize on the other urban centers of the Philippines.
44 Nevertheless, the Department of Health estimated plausible the hypothesis that 1,4% of the men aged 15-24 years old were active in the prostitution sector (Sescon 2002: 1) that is to say more than 100,000 individuals at the national level (7,5 millions of men aged 15-24 in the census of 2000). This estimate had, however, never been explained and derived from a national survey in 1994 by the University of the Philippines on sexuality and fertlity of young adults, on 10,000 persons (both sexes). Since then, this estimate seemed to have been accepted by the medical authorities more on an act of faith than on serious researches. If this estimate is correct, it would mean that one individual out of 4 or 6 involved in prostitution is a male (the generally accepted hypothesis states that there are about 300,000-500,000 female prostitutes in the country)!
45 The three studies classified the male prostitutes in two categories: the independents and those employed in establishments. The former were looking for their clients in commercial centers (malls open from 10h to 21h), the parks, theaters and the streets adjacent to the nightclubs, bars and schools and comprised 98% not bonded to a pimp (ibid.). The second type were the employed, working as singers, dancers, models, actors of erotic shows and massage attendants, etc., in establishments open to homosexuals only or to both genders. The client must pay a bar-fine before leaving with the prostitute (Borja 1998: 88). The researches of Sescon (2002) and Saniel (1996) involved 103 and 322 independents respectively, while those of Borja (1998) were based on a sample of 683 individuals of whom 14,5% were employed (99) and 85,5% were independents (584).
46 Like their female counterparts, the male independent prostitutes were young, 85% being in the bracket 15-24 years old but 53% to 68% were between 15 and 19 years old (Borja 1998: 86; Sescon 2002: 3). The more precise classification of Saniel showed the importance of the minors in this activity: 10% were between 12 and 14 years old and 36% were between 15-17 years old (Saniel 1996: 197). The 25 years old and above were negligible in the independents category (5-10%) but comprising still 25% of the staff of the establishments. These differences of life duration in the activity was also reflected in the status of the prostitutes: 87% of the independents were single against 53% of the employed (Borja 1998: 196). The latter were living in with a partner (24%) or were married (13%) or separated (9%). Moreover, the education levels were high specially for the employed: 63% of the independents and 57% of the employed had been in high school but 31% of the independents and 42% of the employed had studied in college (ibid.: 198). Around a fourth of the samples were still enrolled in high school or college and said that it was precisely the reason why they entered in this activity (Sescon 2002: 6; Borja 1998: 86). In fact, the male prostitution seemed to be a part time job for 70 to 80% of these young men (Saniel 1996: 202; Sescon 2002: 7), the main activity being in other services like hotel employees, security guards, waiters in restaurants but also accountant, computer technicians, etc. Those men, working part time, were not considering themselves prostitutes but paid sexual partners. Typically, this activity occupied them two to three days a week for 3 to 6 hours of work a day with three clients a week.
47 Contrary to their western counterparts, 80% of the interviewees considered themselves as heterosexuals and felt pleasure only with the opposite gender, 18,5% said that they were bisexuals and around 1,5% thought they were homosexuals (Borja 1998: 87; Sescon 2002: 7). This sexual orientation was even more pronounced for the employees since 90% and 10% were heterosexuals and bisexuals respectively, none having an homosexual orientation. Despite this strong sexual preference, 69% and 41% of the independents interwieved by Borja and Saniel respectively had an exclusive male clientele composed mainly of homosexuals but also transsexuals and bisexuals aged 30-40 years old (Borja 1998: 90; Saniel 1996: 206). Fifty percent of the young men said that they had at least a regular customer of which 23% were married. Most of the clients were Filipinos, but 30% of the prostitutes had also foreign clients, mainly Americans but also Japanese, Koreans, Thais, etc. The employed prostitutes had a more diversified clientele composed of men but also of women (54% of the employed had a mix clientèle) (Borja 1998: 90). According to Sescon (2002: 15), the female clients were generally widows aged 40-50 years old of Chinese origin but also unmarried women of 30-40 years old and prostitutes active locally or coming back from Japan. Nearly 23% of the employed had at least one regular female client (Borja 1998: 206). Finally, 34% of the male prostitutes had a non paid sexual activity with men and 80% with women (spouses, fiancées, or simple acquaintances) (Borja 1998: 215).
48 With these multiple bisexuals paid or unpaid relations, the use of condoms was extremely low. According to Saniel, 62% of the young men never used or seldom used a condom during anal relationships with their clients (practiced by 60% of the male prostitutes among whom 48% exclusively in active position, 10% only receptive and 2% varying) and 78% in vaginal relationships with their female clients (81% with their non paying partners) (Saniel 1996: 211). The main reasons given by the clients for the refusal were the possibilities of being better paid for 80% of the cases and the trust in the non paying partners and the decrease of pleasure for 65%. The survey of Sescon, recent, did not show significant changes in this area, the client decided. Nearly 51% of the young men had at least one experience of venereal disease since they were active in this sector (in average starting this activity one year and a half before the survey) and less than 10% had seen a private or public medical doctor (Sescon 2002: 14). For the majority, the only possibility was the self medication on the advises of their colleagues not by lack of financial resources but because of a strong feeling of personal shame (80%).
Towards a Full Blown Epidemic of AIDS?
49 For decades, the Philippines seemed to have avoided the disastrous AIDS epidemics confronted by the neighboring countries. Between 1984, year of the first official case of AIDS and 2015, the Department of Health (DOH) took the census of 27,138 seropositive persons (DOH 2015). However, if this total number was still small, most of the cases had been detected between 2010 and 2015 (22,714 or 84% of all the detected cases in 30 years). Moreover, the number of individuals diagnosed with the HIV is reaching 25 per day in 2016 (3802 new cases detected from January to May 2016), from four in 2010 (Lozada 2016). The patients diagnosed with the HIV since 2010 were mostly males (21,601 or 95%) and young (30% between age 15 to 24 and 50% between 25 and 34). The means of transmission were mostly sexual (93%, of which 79% were homosexual relations), and through needles sharing (5%).
50 The national and international experts agree that the Philippines have all the necessary characteritics for an explosive AIDS epidemic. If the high risk groups (female and male prostitutes) have relatively few clients, the behavioral studies show since 1997 a low use of condoms: 50% for the registered prostitutes, 78% for the freelances and 29% for the male prostitutes and their clients and much lower rates with their non-paying partners. For the clients, only 58% used a condom with a prostitute and 8% with their partners (DOH 2002: 3). The direct consequence of non-use of condom is the high rate of venereal diseases that increase the risk of HIV transmission (DOH 2002: 2). Concerning the general population, an important survey on family planning done in 2002 by the Commission on Population on 11,6 millions of married women, showed the vulnerability of the persons in a potential context of AIDS epidemic. Here, 35,1% of the married women were using an artificial method of contraception and 13,8% practice natural methods. Among the modern technics, the use of pills and female sterilization were the most favored. The condom was the lowest of the couples’choices (just before the male sterilization) with only 1,6% of the couples using it (189,000 women).
51 As the Philippines is facing a growing health crisis (133,000 cases could be detected by the year 2022 if nothing is done), the Philippine Congress has stopped the funding of the contraceptives, part of the Family Planning Law voted in 2015, in the national budget of 2016. If the President Rodrigo Duterte has promised to find a budget to implement this law up to the end of his mandate in 2022, the Philippines have nevertheless wasted a lot of precious time in the fight against AIDS. The first National HIV Testing Week was organized in July 2015 but as the World Health Organization representative in the Philippines said, the country needs a bigger action if it wants to control the epidemics (Geronimo 2015).
In Conclusion
52 The study of prostitution in the Philippines, through the long period of time, shows some cycles of development of this phenomenon based on the integration of the archipelago to international colonial capitalism, the militarization of the territory through garrisons and huge American military bases and finally on aggressive public policies for the touristic development and the promotion of work abroad since the Marcos years until the present administration. Facing this sector, the legislation has fluctuated, hesitating between total ban for moral reasons, general ban but with some exceptions for military reasons, and disguised legalization for medical reasons. None of these formula has reduced prostitution, the clandestinity being the daily life of the majority of the prostitutes through time. Between pragmatism and the total ban, the feminist organizations call for a third way: decriminalization of the prostitutes but reinforcing the punishments for the other actor of the prostitution sector. A priori, this proposal seems to be tempting, but sets also a practical question. Since the 1990s, the judicial system of the Philippines has been continuously reinforced to fight all the actors of the prostitution sector. But, no national or foreign clients, owners or mamasans have been condemned so far. At worst, the foreigners arrested have been deported voluntarily without prosecution. In this context, the disguised legalization of prostitution seems premature, risking even to trivialize this work and not reduce it, the other actors having, eventually, to increase their “pay off” to protect themselves, the risk factor having been in theory displaced.
53 These three proposals, control of the problem (pragmatism), evacuation of the problem (total ban) and a mix of both (feminist view), are laying on the postulate that the prostitution in the Philippines is a shameful sickness which must be eradicated. But, it seems for me, that at the opposite, the explosion of this sector is only one symptom of a much deeper sickness of the Philippine society: an economic growth which fruits are shared by a small economic and political elite, excluding the majority of the people. The Philippines having, up to recently, escaped the AIDS epidemic, have avoided a strong and real national debate on public policy orientation on social and economic development and their impact to the population. Can we, for example, promote the Philippines as a touristic destination using other arguments than the white sand beaches, the coconut trees, the very active urban nightlife and the beauty, charm, kindness and warmth of the Filipinas? How would the country attract a more family oriented tourism? What can be done to help the families reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies? All these questions and many more need middle to long term strategies actively supported by the successive administrations and their social partners. Will the Filipino politicians be able to put aside their recurring internal squabbles and propose real solutions to uplift the society?
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Bibliographical reference
François-Xavier Bonnet , “From Oripun to the Yapayuki-San : An Historical Outline of Prostitution in the Philippines” , Moussons , 29 | 2017, 41-64.
Electronic reference
François-Xavier Bonnet , “From Oripun to the Yapayuki-San : An Historical Outline of Prostitution in the Philippines” , Moussons [Online], 29 | 2017, Online since 27 March 2017 , connection on 11 May 2024 . URL : http://journals.openedition.org/moussons/3755; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/moussons.3755
About the author
François-xavier bonnet.
François-Xavier Bonnet is a geographer and research associate with the Research Institute of Contemporary Southeast Asia (IRASEC). Specialized on Philippines geopolitics, he wrote several chapters of the book Philippines Contemporaines published by IRASEC and Les Indes Savantes in 2013. He is also a consultant on Philippines affairs for French, Philippines and International institutions.
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The Open Secret Of Male Prostitution In The Philippines: A Descriptive Phenomenological Study
2021, European Scientific Journal, ESJ
This study attempts to describe the lived experiences of the male teenager and adult sex workers of Cebu City, Philippines in terms of their attitude and behavior, reasons for indulging in prostitution, clientele, challenges, and coping mechanisms. A descriptive phenomenological design with personal interviews and a naturalistic paradigm were used to gather data from the purposely chosen participants. Triangulation was carried to validate the participants' responses. Results show that male teenagers and adult sex workers tend to be covert of their work, neglectful of others' judgment about prostitution, and view prostitution as any other job. Poverty, lack of parental guidance and support, early exposure to pornography, peer pressure, unemployment due to poor educational attainment were their reasons for indulging in prostitution. They catered to random bisexual and transgender clients. They encountered various problems such as awkwardness with their partner, financial instability, public distress, and fear of HIV transmission. Getting motivation from the money as payment, sustaining their own and family's needs were their means of coping up. Resorting into prostitution is a story to tell. Male teenagers and adult sex workers experienced poverty as their common denominator of indulging in prostitution. Though they are condemned by society for entering prostitution they intend to provide and suffice their needs. Prostitution, therefore, is a means to survive amidst living in poverty.
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A semistructured questionnaire was administered to 50 male prostitutes and 50 nonprostitutes matched on age, sex, and socioeconomic status. The questionnaire focused on areas pertaining to family, sexual and criminal history, current life situation, sexual practices with clients, substance abuse, etc. In addition, the Beck Depression lnventory and the Tennessee Self-Concept Scale were administered to 35 subjects from each group. Results indicated that there were differences between the groups but that these differences did not entirely support the demographic profile offered by previous researchers. Specifically , our findings suggest that factors related to family background may be less important as potential determinants for entry into prostitution than influences related to financial gain, sexual orientation (homosexuality), and early sexual experiences.
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Prostitution is the business or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. Prostitution profession is emerging rapidly worldwide, particular in Pakistan. The purpose of this study to explore the factors inclined women towards prostitution, customers' attitude and behavior towards prostitutes and the effects of co-habitual activities on the stake holders. This study is qualitative in nature and based on in-depth interviews with the thirty three women prostitutes in three cities, Lahore, Faisalabad and Samundri, of the Punjab, Pakistan. In findings, there were multiple pushing factors of women involvement into sex work, some voluntarily and others involuntarily. In voluntarily, poverty, worse economic conditions, illness in family, debt, sex for enjoyment, peer association, family neglect, domestic clashes, drug addiction in husbands and in involuntarily, forced rap, sexual assault, early marriages, trafficking, deceived by family, deceived by lover. In view of the results, women prostitutes had to face worse and severe consequences in concern their health like unwanted pregnancy, abortion, unwanted children, HIV/AIDS, Drug addiction, ovarian issues, break the parts of the body and some other psychological and social issues and in respect of customers' behavior like refusing of payment, kidnapping and sexual assault, beating, forcefully abusive acts, violence, drug abusing, threatening, tie and sexual abuse.
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By one estimate a half a million women prostitute themselves. There are basically three kinds of prostitutes in the Philippines: 1) those that work out of "casas," or brothels, and are employed by pimps or brothel owners: 2) those who work in bars, karaokes and hotels, who are usually controlled by the owners of the establishment where they ...
Prostitution in the Philippines is illegal, although somewhat tolerated, with law enforcement being rare with regards to sex workers. Penalties range up to life imprisonment for those involved in trafficking, which is covered by the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003. Prostitution is available through bars, karaoke bars (also known as KTVs), massage parlors, brothels (also known as casa ...
There are about 42 million prostitutes in the world who are living all over the world and it was estimated that there were up to 500,000 prostitutes in the Philippines in 2003. Other countries legalized prostitution and regulated rules for it already, but prostitution in the Philippines still remains illegal. Although prostitution has become ...
Prostitution is illegal in the Philippines and commercial sex with a child under the age of 18 is rape. But bar managers can circumnavigate laws. Girls and women are presented as "entertainers ...
Short shelf life of women involved in Prostitution. In a study of prostitution along Quezon Avenue 243 prostituted women (PW) were interviewed.13 Of the 243 PW, 45% were aged between 18-22 years old, 30% between 23-27 years old and 11% between 28-32 years old. The relatively young age of the prostituted women reflects what is called "the ...
In the Philippine Anti-Prostitution Bill of 2009, it is defi ed as a a t, tra sa tio , s he e or design involving the use of a person whether woman, man or child, for sexual gratification, exploitation or pleasure of another in exchange for cash, profit or other consideration, or any act that promotes or fa ilitates the a o plish e t of the ...
Prostitution is illegal in the Philippines and commercial sex with a child under the age of 18 is rape. But bar managers can circumnavigate laws. Girls and women are presented as "entertainers" rather than sex workers, and payments for sex are packaged as "fines" paid to the bars by a patron on behalf of a woman leaving her shift early.
In many parts of the Philippines, many prostituted men and women also make the transactions on the Internet, said Arnel Sigue, president of the Anti-Trafficking Legal Advocates Society (ATLAS), a group based in neighboring Bacolod City. It makes it harder to document them, he added. Increased risks during the pandemic
Prostitution as VAW, prostituted women as victims. The women's movements in the Philippines are by no means united over the issue of prostitution but the dominant narrative is that prostitution was identified as "violence against women" (VAW) and not "sex work".
Prostitution, a form of sexual exploitation and violence against women and girls is a human rights violation. It is an exploitative system that ... around 800,000 prostituted persons in the Philippines. Prostitution thrives because of gender inequality and lack of respect for women's human rights clearly
CATW-AP (its Asia-Pacific chapter) is an international network of feminist groups and organizations fighting domestic and sexual violence, especially prostitution, suffered by women around the globe. In the Philippines, they are part of the National Coordination Body of the World March of Women. Launched in 1988, in New York, USA, during the ...
This article is about how women's organizations constructed "the Filipino woman" as part of the feminist project of addressing prostitution as a women's issue in the Philippines from 1985 to 2006. Despite the radical positions of women's activism, the eternal binary of the woman as victim/agent, martyr/advocate or martyr/activist haunted the discourses about Filipino womanhood. Feminist ...
The study of prostitution in the Philippines, through the long period of time, shows some cycles of development of this phenomenon based on the integration of the archipelago to international colonial capitalism, the militarization of the territory through garrisons and huge American military bases and finally on aggressive public policies for the touristic development and the promotion of ...
Why should Sex Tourism and Prostitution be Legalized in the. Philippines. Mark Gabriel Wagan Aguilar. School Director, ABE Internati onal Business College, Quezon City, Philippines. E-Mail ...
Prostitution in the Philippines 12/01/2009 December 1, 2009. Prostitution on the archipelago is illegal. Still, there are about 800,000 prostitutes living and working in the Philippines.
The study of prostitution in the Philippines, through the long period of time, shows some cycles of development of this phenomenon based on the integration of the archipelago to international ...
1328 Words. 6 Pages. Open Document. Prostitution is one of the oldest professions that have widely been practiced around the world, and the Philippines is no exception to this. With the advent of Spanish colonists in the late 1500s, Filipina slaves were sold as "exotic sex objects" or prostitutes to European brothels.
escalation of prostitution accompanied by human trafficking will be reduced. Farley (2009) affirms that legalizing prostitution reduces human trafficking. In the Philippines, male prostitution is a predominant reason of its high HIV rate where the main mode of transmission is sexual intercourse (Department of Health, 2018).
Abstract. This study attempts to describe the live d experiences of the male. teenager and adult sex workers of Cebu City, Philippines in terms of their. attitude and behavior, reasons for ...
in prostitution; and to draw attention to the economic and social bases that sustain the sector. Specifically, the cursory study aims to a. To map a profile of children involved in prostitution, including the existing discourse on the economic and social root causes, and operations that contribute to the proliferation of the issue; b.
In the Philippines, male prostitution is a predominant reason of its high HIV rate where the main mode of transmission is sexual intercourse (Department of Health, 2018). The terms used for male sex workers differ from females. Some terms may vary by method of business or clientele. In countries where prostitution is illegal or taboo, male sex ...
Benefits Of Legalizing Prostitution. 1030 Words5 Pages. Prostitution is the business or practice of engaging in sexual relations in exchange for payment or some other benefit. A person who works in this field is called a prostitute and is a kind of sex worker. There are about 42 million prostitutes in the world who are living all over the world ...