Bare-breasted culture of hypocrisy

• Published: 21/04/2011 at 12:00 AM
• Newspaper section: News

================================================

It happened more than three decades ago but I can still vividly remember my first visit to an a-go-go bar in Patpong. The skimpily-clad girls were doing their sexy pole dance on the stage, but their faces were emotionless. In the smoke-filled bar some customers simply could not keep their hands off the bar girls' bodies.

First I was stunned. I'd seen photos of a-go-go dancers before, but to see them "at work" with my own two eyes hit me hard. Then I was saddened: no girl would dance near-naked or tolerate being groped by strangers if they had a better choice in life.

As I looked around, anger arose. It was so fierce it has stayed with me till today, whenever I think of how our society works so slyly through gender and class oppression to reduce women into sex objects so men can enjoy sexual indulgences without guilt or shame.

Thirty years on, a stone's throw away from the Patpong red-light district, three teenage girls celebrated Songkran by dancing in public amid lewd cheers from drunken revellers, just for the thrill of it.

They might have been drunk. Or they may have been "spaced out" in a trance-like state from the repetitive, pounding rhythms which made them follow the crowd's thunderous calls to throw away their bras.

Whatever. I was stunned when I saw the video clip. Then I became sad. What kind of society have we bequeathed our kids, to have led to this?

The fury only came after Culture Minister Niphit Intharasombat lambasted the three teenage girls for offending the country's culture.

What about the culture of heavy drinking? What about the rowdy crowd and the culture which treats women as sex objects? What about the commercial culture that pushes for girls' early sexuality or makes women think that flashing the flesh is a sign of self confidence?

You don't dare touch the big businesses that profit from these cultures, and you blame the kids for buying into those values?

Meanwhile, district chief Surakiat Limcharoen of Bang Rak, home of Patpong, had the nerve to press for the girls' arrest for "destroying the country's reputation". He failed to stop the free flow of alcohol for minors on Silom, but he blames the kids for being drunk and senseless?

To cap it all, the police forced the girls, covered like criminals in hoods and sunglasses, to apologise to the public. At a press conference, they stressed they hadn't been drunk, thus freeing police from any blame for the Songkran drinking mayhem.

Furthermore, the police described the girls as school dropouts with a history of drugs. The message was that these were not "good girls". Which was why they did what they did.

The media, meanwhile, repeatedly showed the dance video clips along with their news reports, because sex sells.

The Associated Press described the uproar as a "tension between Thailand's traditionally modest culture and the country's reputation as a sex capital".

I disagree. This is not about tension. It is about hypocrisy. And oppression.

Tension suggests differences. The fact is Thailand has become a hub of the sex industry - not despite its culture but because of it.

Mr Niphit's initial guess that the girls were bar girls is quite telling. So were the condemnations from the district chief and the police.

Why do women enter the sex trade? Because they are "bad" girls.

Why did these teenagers dare dance topless in public? Because they, too, are "bad" girls.

Our culture maintains the good girl/bad girl divide to endorse men's sexual promiscuity, which allows the business of sexual exploitation to prosper.

The culture of blaming it all on bad girls allows the real culprits to get away with murder.

I thought changes in social mores have been too fast for me to catch up with, when I watched the dance clip.

But I was wrong.

When I watched the girls in hoods and sunglasses mumbling apologies with police in the background on the morning news, I literally shook with anger.Blame the girls. Blame those who cannot fight back, just to save the skins of the powerful.

This is our culture. And nothing has changed.

(source:.bangkokpost.com)

=================================================